Jelena Vesić

Biography

Jelena Vesić is an independent curator, writer, editor and lecturer. She investigates the connections between art and ideology in relation to geopolitical art history writing, experimental art and exhibition practices from the 1960s and 1970s in former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe.

She was co-editor of Prelom – Journal of Images and Politics (2001–2009) and co-founder of independent organisation Prelom Collective (2005–2010), active in the field of publishing, research and exhibition practice that intertwines political theory and contemporary art. She is a member of the editorial board of Art Margins (MIT Press) and advisory board of Mezosfera (Budapest). She is also president of AICA [International Association of Art Critics] Serbia.

Vesić’s curatorial works include lecture performance Story on Copy, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2017); Lecture Performance, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade and Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2009/2010) (with Anja Dorn and Kathrin Jentjens) as well as the collective exhibition project Political Practices of (post-) Yugoslav Art (2009), which critically examined art historical concepts and narratives on Yugoslav art after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Her essay-book, On Neutrality (with Vladimir Jerić Vlidi and Rachel O'Reilly), is part of Non-Aligned Modernity edition of Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (2016). She is the editor of Alt-Truths and Insta-Realities: The Psychopolitics of Contemporary Right (Red Thread #5, 2020 (with Vladimir Jerić Vlidi); Stagecraft by Vesna Pavlović, (Vanderbilt University Press, 2021); Feminist Takes: Early Works by Želimir Žilnik (with Antonia Majaca and R. O’Reilly) (Sternberg Press, 2021).

Vesić holds a MA in Art History and a PhD in Theory of Arts and Media from the University of Arts, Belgrade. She was a post-doctoral researcher and Goethe Institute fellow at Haus der Kunst Munich, working on the topic Postcolonial: 1955-1980 (part of art historical trilogy Postwar, Postcolonial, Postcommunist by Okwui Enwezor, 2017) and, in continuation, she worked as a researcher for the project Postcolonial Constellations at Sharjah Art Foundation (2021–2022).

She was born in 1974 in Belgrade where she continues to live and work.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2023