Perceptions: Engendered

Perceptions: Engendered at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje is the last show of the collaborative curatorial project Perceptions, which focuses on female artists. Conceived as a collaboration among five curators from the Western Balkans, the project presented in each of the exhibitions 24 works by 14 British women artists from the British Council Collection, which the curators jointly selected and entered in a dialogue with local works of art. Thus, Perceptions grew as a fluid female art space at the intersection of the different cultural, political and theoretical strategies within the political geography of the Western Balkans – starting from Cetinje, through Novi Sad and Priština, Banja Luka, to finally take the stage in Skopje.

The exhibition in Skopje will close the exhibition cycle by showcasing 39 contemporary artworks of 25 women, conceptualized in three sections: views, representation and representation strikethrough. The presented artists reclaim the female form, interrupting the production and perpetuation of gender hierarchies and finally proposing new methods of thinking about (gender) representation.

Stretching along the three areas of the feminine position: looking and seeing – VIEWS, representing visually – REPRESENTATIONS and “ruining the representation” – REPRESENTATIONS STRIKETHROUGH, the idea behind this conceptual division is not to produce yet another framework of interpretation through the multivocal visualisation of the female experience, but to call for structured and detailed examination of the male principle upon which modernity was built and to enter critically into the problematic of representation(s) through radical questioning.

Featured artists: Abigail Lane, Ana Temkova, Aneta Svetieva, Anthea Hamilton, Camilla Løw, Celia Hempton, Clare Strand, Elizabeth Price, Evgenija Demnievska, Gillian Wearing, Helen Chadwick, Hristina Ivanoska, Irena Paskali, Laura Aldridge, Ljupka Deleva, Lubaina Himid, Madame Yevonde, Mirna Arsovska, Monika Moteska, Rachel Whiteread, Sarah Lucas, Tracy Emin, Verica Kovacevska, Violeta Capovska, Zaneta Vangeli

Curators of exhibition: Kumjana Novakova, Blagoja Varosanec

Cover photo: Aneta Svedtieva, By the Beauty and the Beast, 1993, terracotta figurines installed in various dimensions