VALENTINA SAVIC

Valentina Savic (Serbian, born 1970) is a contemporary visual artist. She first came to prominence in the late 1990s, where she redefined what it was to make and experience contemporary ceramics. She is the most provocative ceramic artist in Serbia and skilled and sophisticated producer of objects and happening, not knowing where her stories end. Maybe a storyteller, she resonates with people, societies, and deals with themes that are quite universal.

Valentina's work points at her economic reality, the consumer society we live in, and critique of the industrialization of art. Through her porcelain objects and performances, she emphasizes and presents situations in which the artist assumes the role of an industrialist. (Moral Cleansing effect performance) But even among the high lightened work, there are some darker exhibits, that gave us direct references to a modern twist of consumerism.

A series of her works discuss issues the masculine and feminine body, traditional in ceramic sculpture, and explores "ceramic stereotypes" through several concepts. They talk more about the human condition, in the face of different situations. In a way, her work is extremely classical, from her technical proficiency, forms, materials she uses, but very modernist in its values.

As a ceramist, her objects are carefully chosen to be made in porcelain, and in every work, the material characteristic is used to be a part of the statement, (fragility, earthiness, color, history,etc…).

She uses archetypes as the basis of her artistic research and by using androgynous product designs (that is read in her pins, potyes, school brain models …) emphasizes the androgynies gender gaps and similarities. These everyday objects and recognizable forms, which do not have authorial integrity, are reorganized into the sculptures, ceramic art installations, and performances. Valentina hand designed them in a recognizable spirit of contemporary socialistic, Balkan, and (as well prehistoric) Serbian discourse. Dealing with the idea of strategic consumption and identities, she finds a perfect match between contemporary ceramic objects and performances.

Consequently, it reviews the relationship between the parts of the serial production and raises the issue of the author's work, as well as the status of the artwork, introducing into her work the term “designing a sculpture” that corresponds to the process and result of work.

“Contemporary goddess, life, procreation, existence, human conditions that are always there, are subjects of my own identity but the idea of eternity is subject of my art.”

 

prof.Dr. Snežana Arnautović Stjepanović visual & performeance artist professor at Belgrade Dance Institute