// IsidoraKrstic
(*1987 in Belgrade) Since 2012 she lives and works in Vienna. She graduated in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and received a Master (M.A.) in Art and Science from the University
of Applied Arts in Vienna. She is the co-founder and active member of artist-run U10 Art Space in Belgrade. Her work was exhibited in several exhibitions such as Galerie 5020 Salzburg, PROJEKTRAUMBerlin, Galerija Vodnikove Domacije, Ljubljana, Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna Art Week etc. She was awarded for STEVAN KNEZEVIC AWARD FOR DRAWING and the Dositeja Scholarship from the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Serbia.
OF EGO
Isidora Krstic revisits her memories of the Nato bombing of Belgrade, which she had experienced as a twelve year old child in Belgrade, in 1999. Krstic tried to reckon with any emotions related to the bombing, which she found were quite numbed in relation to the objective horror of the event itself.
The artist went on to search for any visual footage of the bombing which would be available online, to see what kind of reactions these would illicit.
She found videos of the targeted locations, seen from cameras mounted on the missiles or planes themselves: still aerial view - firing - racing through space - darkness. The almost casual aspect of the filmed footage evoked feelings of terror, which were actually felt for the first time. The video work, which was finalized in 2018, represents found footage from the Internet. The photographs represent stills of the videos, where she “censored”, with a black marker, all the redundant information featured on the found footage (numbers, coordinates) that did not relate to the direct event of the dropped bomb.
MEMORIES
Fernweh: Segment No. 2
For the occasion of our exhibition ‘Transforming Memories’ and the also in the second exhibition ‘Liquid Landscapes’ Isidora Krstic presents a work which is a continuation of her Fernweh project which she started in 2015. The project represents a contemplation and deconstruction of the representational and ontological aspects of landscape images found in travel brochures. The brochure’s primary purpose as such is to present a multitude of travel destinations to the future traveller. On one hand, it plays with our memories as well as our desires in a way where it can offer the reproduction of a memory once lived through, telling us that you can relive and re-experience it, and that it is not forever lost. On the other hand, and maybe most prominently, the catalogue may trigger our innate desire to experience the ultimate ‘exotic’ and unknown place, the (literal) utopian island. It is a place where we send all of our thoughts and hopes for a ‘better world’. The catalogue can thus be seen as an apparatus which makes our memories and desires known (again), borrows them from us, negotiates them and gives us back the ultimate utopian possibility.
In the work, by cutting out and breaking down a careful selection of the offered images, the artist re-assembles them to the point of making the places they represent just barely recognisable. The single images are stripped back to their most basic elements of colour and paper; geometrical and spatial elements introduced, where new spaces of interpretation are enabled to open up.
