Vesna Pavlović '07 Exhibits Across Europe
Visual Arts alum Vesna Pavlović '07 is showing in two major exhibitions to close out the year.
HELDINNEN / SHEROES, or in English, HEROINES / SHEROES, brings together the work of international women artists around themes of memory, resistance, and identity at Frauenmuseum in Bonn, Germany. The exhibition focuses on women whose ethical commitments have shaped their artistic exploration; as a young artist, Pavlović provided artistic witness to the disintegration of her native Yugoslavia.
In the 1990s, Pavlović worked closely with the Belgrade branch of the international feminist pacifist group Women in Black as a photojournalist. In October 1991, the group took a stand.
Every Wednesday at 4 PM, the Women in Black would gather on the streets of Belgrade for a public, nonviolent protest opposing nationalism and militarism, ethnic discrimination, and the regime of Slobodan Milošević. Chanting "not in our name," the women critically distanced themselves from the regime and demanded change.
In HEROINES / SHEROES, Pavlović's photographs from this pivotal moment are shown alongside renowned voices like Marina Abramović and the feminist artists' collective PUSSY RIOT, known for its artistic and activist resistance against authoritarian regimes.
Personal Stories / Political Realities is a double exhibition taking place between the Musée d'art contemporain in Lyon, France (macLYON) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Serbia (MoCAB). The dialogue between the museums explores how art can provide key insights into the political, social, and cultural changes of an era. In particular, it illuminates the immense creative output of contemporary artists from Serbia and former Yugoslavia—a group often underrepresented in French public collections—within the international contemporary art scene.
The exhibition features works from Pavlović's project Search For Landscapes, which explores American consumerism and power through the lens (both literal and conceptual) of the tourist with a camera. The project developed from found vintage slides documenting one American family's travels around the world in the 1960s. The faded slides ignite a retro romanticism of the free-wheeling 1960s while, at the same time, pointing to the fleeting nature of not only their experiences, but their documentation.
Vesna Pavlović is an Associate Professor of Art at Vanderbilt University. Expanding the photographic image beyond its frame, her projects examine the evolving relationship between memory in contemporary culture and the technologies of photographic image production.
Pavlović has exhibited widely, including 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. She is the recipient of the 2024 NEA Art Projects Award, the 2022 Tennessee Arts Commission Arts Access Grant, the 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and a 2018 Fulbright Scholar Award, among others. Recent publications include Vesna Pavlović, Stagecraft (Vanderbilt University Press, 2021) and Vesna Pavlović’s Lost Art: Photography, Display, and the Archive (Hanes Art Gallery, Wake Forest University, 2018).
HELDINNEN / SHEROES is on view May 11–December 31, 2025 at Frauenmuseum in Bonn, Germany.
Personal Stories / Political Realities, a dialogue between the museums of contemporary art in Lyon and Belgrade, is on view at MAC Lyon in Lyon, France September 19, 2025–January 6, 2026.
