PERLA is the title of the new performance that the artist Marta Jovanović will held on Thursday 26 January 2023 at 7:30 PM in the gallery Maja Arte Contemporanea at via di Monserrato 30, Rome.
“The vision of the absent, by cross-references, insinuates itself into the vision of the form and the meaning, not iconic, allegorical or moral, but simply visual, is instilled, once and forever, imprinting itself with the mark of the name, over the resembling structure.
This imprimitura does not carry with it value or even a necessary teaching, but it certainly carries with it the locus of genesis, by assonance or, indeed, similarity.
But then perhaps we should also look at everything else differently. The corner is not just a corner and carries with it all the valences of corner similes. Not to mention the actor’s body and that of the visitor. Above it all appears the position and clustering of small structures, or otherwise known as pearls, in a square.”
Set design by Sauro Radicchi. Special thanks to Davide Dormino e Janneke Leenders.
Biography of the performer
Marta Jovanović (Belgrado – Serbia, 1978) is a performance artist and lecturer with the mission to promote and facilitate the further advancement of the discipline.
Founder of the Performance Art Program at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, artist-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, in 2017 Jovanović stars in the documentary film ‘Born Just Now’, by US director Robert Adanto, winner of numerous international awards.
Her works “Pionirka”, “It is My Body”, “Love” and “Motherhood” can be found in important private museum collections. The performance “BelgradeMermaid” opened the Belgrade Biennale in 2018, while the following year the sequel “Mermaid’s Tale” became a virtual reality performance.
Curator Kathy Battista wrote a compendium on her early work entitled “Marta Jovanović: Performing the Self”, published by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of the City University of New York, while in the book New York New Wave, Battista positions Jovanović as one of New York’s most urgent contemporary feminist artists. Marta Jovanović is a lecturer and Visual Arts Coordinator for RUFA.
