Ivana Bago: The Title of Art and Its Expositions

World of Art | Year 18 | Series of public lectures

Lecture

Tuesday, 14 December 2021, 6 pm
Project Room SCCA, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

Although mostly forgotten in English as a name for large-scale, public display, the term exposition — whose meaning encompasses both a public exhibition and an act of presenting and proving an idea or theory — is well suited to address the growing discursification of modern and contemporary art. Over the course of the twentieth century, the intensifying potency of language in the realm formerly known as the visual arts steered art away from exhibition towards exposition, with conceptual art as the culmination of the icon’s contamination by logos. The intimacy of what is now known as contemporary art with the traditions of philosophy and critical theory testifies to the longevity of this bond between “art and language,” and the purchase it has had in establishing contemporary art as simultaneously a politicized cultural practice and one that is particularly well adapted to the conditions of so-called cognitive capitalism. This talk will propose to view the institution of the title as a site on which it is possible to examine this contradictory place of the discursive and the conceptual in contemporary art, and its exhibitions.

The lecture will be held in English and will be followed by a conversation.

To attend please apply at: info@scca-ljubljana.si.
Attending the lecture is permitted only with a negative PCR or RAT test result or a medical certificate of recovery or vaccination.

Ivana Bago is an independent scholar, writer, and curator based in Zagreb. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Culture from Duke University and is the co-founder (with Antonia Majaca) of Delve | Institute for Duration, Location, and Variables (www.delve.hr). Her writings on (post)Yugoslav art, contemporary art, and theory have been published in academic presses and journals, as well as magazines such as e-flux journal and Artforum. She is on the editorial board of the journal ARTMargins and is the recipient of the Igor Zabel Award Grant for 2020. Her curatorial projects include: Moving Forwards, Counting Backwards (MUAC, Mexico City, 2012), Where Everything is Yet to Happen (Spaport Biennale, Banja Luka, 2009/10), The Orange Dog and Other Tales (Zagreb, 2009), Stalking with Stories (Apexart, New York, 2007). She is currently working on her book manuscript Yugoslav Aesthetics: Monuments to History’s Bare Bones, 1908–2018, and developing a research and publishing project on Sanja Iveković’s work and personal archive.