Alumna Vesna Pavlović '07 Presents 'Traversing Geographies, Complicating Memories' at Whitespace

February 11, 2021

Visual Arts alumna Vesna Pavlović ’07 presents Traversing Geographies, Complicating Memories at whitespace gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Whitespace is a contemporary gallery that aims to create a culture of free-expression, intimacy, and dialogue. Directed by Susan Bridges, the gallery has hosted numerous exhibitions spanning all mediums “promoting innovation and inquiries into the relationships that define who we are, both collectively and as individuals.”

Traversing Geographies, Complicating Memories is a hybrid video, photographic, and sculptural investigation of archives across different landscapes and time periods. In one archival pigment print titled “Jardines de Hershey, Jibacoa, Cuba, 2019,” the sun starbursts through a canopy of green, and the leaves appear, reflected, in the dark water under the trees. “Diffused Reflections 2019” shows a close-up tangle of fabric in grayscale, subdued and falling like silk. “Ceiling Systems 2019” evokes an airy classroom or office space, the dense network of metal above contrasting with the minimalism below.

Whitespace concurrently presents Hanita Schwartz’s Relicaptia, which examines how revisionism and appropriation can be used to see the Western canon’s traditional narratives in a new light. One of Schwartz’s pieces presents the young woman in Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” with green reeds and leaves growing out of her stomach and between her legs. 

Pavlović’s work explores the ever-changing relationship between memory in contemporary culture and the technologies of photographic image construction. She often stretches the photographic image beyond its frame, typical format, and narrative. She also makes use of archives and related artifacts to examine the photographic representation of certain political and cultural histories. 

Her numerous exhibitions include solo shows at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Museum of History of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, along with many group shows at the 12th Istanbul Biennial, 2011, in Turkey; The MAC – Metropolitan Arts Center in Belfast, Northern Ireland; Württembergischen Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, Germany; KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn, Estonia; and Zachęta, The National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland, among others. 

Additionally, her work is housed in major private and public collections: Phillips Collection, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Serbia, among others.

She was the recipient of the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation fellowship in 2017, the City of Copenhagen Artist-in-Residence grant in 2011, Contemporary Foundation for the Arts Emergency Grants in 2011 and 2014, an Art Matters Foundation grant in 2012, and the Fulbright Scholar Award in 2018. She was also a Southern Prize Fellow in 2018. 

She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. 
 

The exhibition runs from January 30, 2021 to March 6, 2021, and the gallery is observing COVID-19 safety guidelines.