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АНА АДАмОвИћ
ANA AdAMOviĆ
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The entire opus of Ana Adamović until now has been within
the framework of exploring photography as a medium.
From her very first works, realised by means of a classical
documentarist approach, through formal experiments with
materials and the process of developing photographs, to
ambitious research projects and projects featuring a great
number of participants, Adamović has redefined the position
of photography in contemporary artistic production and ope-
ned up space for a new understanding of the medium itself.
A significant segment of her work is directed towards
an active pondering of contemporary social and political
problems, both in Serbia and in broader terms. In the work
of Ana Adamović, actively pondering issues presupposes
creating projects that, in the course of the actual process of
realisation, deal with a particular problem, be it through
research work or by involving a great number of participants.
Thus her project Communication, realised over the course
of two years in the multiethnic areas of the region, deals
with the problem of communication between different ethnic
groups that share this common living space. The project
involved over a hundred young people who, through work
on photography, tried to define their mutual relations and
get to know one another. What is important here is that
Adamović manages not only to maintain but also to improve
the criteria and the quality of the photographic work
presented, so that the final exhibition presented more
than 70 photographs of young authors, participants in the
project, which managed, through their intensity, honesty
and view from the inside, to raise a number of interesting
issues and to present, without any pathos, their thinking
and ideas.
Through this project, Adamović opened up the field of
participative art in Serbia, by then already developed in the
world, and positioned this practice as relevant on the Serbian
art scene.
Adamović also deals with the position of minorities in
her work Without Borders, within the framework of which
she created a series of portraits accompanied by interviews
conducted in asylum seeker camps in Vienna. Such interests
of hers were further developed through the project Revealing,
within the framework of which the artist talked to
Muslim women in Sandžak about the motivation and the
reasons for covering their faces. The project was presented
in the form of an installation featuring a series of portraits
and audio interviews. Both projects speak, in an immediate
and direct way, about situations of which we usually get to
know from the media, and open an entirely new perspective
of understanding problems that surround us.
Over the course of the past several years, Adamović has
initiated several large-scale documentarist-research projects,
of which perhaps the most ambitious one is the project
entitled Balkan Souvenirs. A part of a series of photographs
created in the course of travelling through Balkan countries
for a number of years was presented at the eponymous exhi-
bition held in Belgrade in 2007. Souvenirs as the objects of
memories of a particular place, event, contain an element of
the typical and recognisable in their nature. Representation
of the Balkan space has abounded precisely in constructed
types of images, used not only in those generated within the
framework of the Western model of representation, but also
in the process of creating national identities that we witness
even today. The souvenirs of Ana Adamović actually negate
the possibility of generalisation and stereotypisation, objecti-
vising an entirely personal experience and offering it as a
legitimate souvenir of the Balkans.
Through her series of works entitled Madeleine, the
artist began her exploration of memory and the nature of
human remembrance. The work is based on old family
photographs, recorded by means of an 8mm camera. By
manipulating these photographs, she creates video works
which, through their aesthetics and the atmosphere that they
induce in the viewer, work as a window to the subconscious.
In this way, the borderline between a true event from the
past and memories created by way of a photograph are
erased. It is precisely this characteristic of memory, the fact
that it records and archives events from the past through
images and visual manifestations, regardless of whether
they were actually experienced or just seen from the side-
lines, that Adamović, as a true photographer, recognises
and deals with through her work Madeleine.
Her video work Canzona is a continuation of the series
Madeleine, only this time it is done directly, without the
mediation of ready-made photographs from the past. In
elderly persons, memories of their early youth are often
clearer than those pertaining to events from the recent past.
Searching for the nature of memories that stretch through
an entire lifespan, Adamović boldly enters the all too often
avoided area of old age and finds authentic beauty in the
portrait of an old woman. This video work consists of a
video portrait of an elderly lady recorded as she listens to
her own performance of her favourite canzona from her
youth. This perfectly filmed and framed video portrait
opens up the emotional world of a life in its late years.
The quality of the picture and the photographic approach
to the work focus the observer’s gaze onto the face of the
old woman, and whether you look directly into her eyes
or are attracted by the discreet facial movements or the
network of wrinkles on her face, this video portrait that we
Pages 26–27:
still from Canzona, 2010
single-channel video installation, 3 minutes 17 seconds
courtesy ana adamović
Pages 30–31:
stills from Madeleine, 2004
single-channel video installation, 3 minutes 42 seconds
courtesy ana adamović
ana adamović was born 1974 in serbia, where she lives and works. with a personal and universal portrait of age and memory,
adamović explores images that represent or could represent memory triggers. Through photographs and video works the
author opens up the possibility of different interpretations of individual and collective images of the past.
are faced with opens wide a specific segment of a lifetime
and invites us to become involved, without any reservations,
and receive the experience and emotions that are presented
to us unobtrusively. Through the themes that it initiates, the
honesty that it achieves in the actual realisation, the brave
approach of the artist and its technical excellence, the work
Canzona opens up a new phase in the work of Ana Adamović,
whose further development we have yet to see.
Even though straddling the borderline separating younger
and middle-aged artists, the opus of Ana Adamović so far
testifies to a very interesting and atypical artistic career.
Although she experiments with the forms of both video and
installation, Adamović remains an unwavering, hard-core
photographer, and it is precisely from this stable position
that she deals with the new possibilities of her basic medium
and other media as well. Her craftsmanship skill and photo-
graphic outlook contribute to the fact that Adamović’s
video works exude a special quality and attract attention
on the international scene. On the other hand, large-scale
projects involving a great number of participants, both
those from different social groups and other artists, testify
to this artist’s ability to operate, outside her individual
perception, as part of a larger team, to initiate and encourage
team work, and to recognise the contribution of others as
a special quality in the process of creating a work of art.
The KIOSK platform for contemporary art, an organisation
operating in the field of contemporary artistic
production, perhaps the most ambitious undertaking
of Ana Adamović so far, testifies to the contemporary
spirit of an artist raising issues, initiating developments,
actively participating in the creation of the art scene and
reacting, as a resolute activist, to the events and situations
that surround us through concrete initiatives.
Milica Pekić
art historian and curator
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