Faith Painting

"Born in 1974. in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Ivona Pleskonja belongs to the generation of young and ambitious artists. She has received acclaim for her works at exhibitions such as the October Salon and the Vrsac Youth Biennale (1998). As a student, she won several awards from the FLU (Faculty of Fine Arts) fund for the best study and drawing, and another award for the best photography from the BC processor fund. In her quest for answers regarding identity, Ivona also cultivates self-portrait, the area of work which she compares to a two-blade sword.-The need to make self-portraits seems at times like a hermetic, mesmerized circle but it may also be an egocentric phase that I think I am gradually leaving now. It is good to find inspiration in ones intimate, personal life, but art must not be totally hermetic. Intimacy should be used to breed something universal, explain Ivona Pleskonja.In this out-of-time game between gods and people, primordial human fears come to the surface again. Ivona Pleskonja does not talk about everyday, topical problems which are easily overcome, nor does she address current issues which are but a mere speck of dust in the history of mankind. Each epoch has its own problems and this is no news. But in each epoch live people who deal with those problems. What each and every culture and civilization fears is that the world will come to an end. Ivona Pleskonja has a positive outlook in that respect; for her the fear is a symbol of the mans victory because at the End of Planet Earth there stands a man who puts on a mask and carries on living (Oxygen).She uses her own image, the image of a woman, a mother, to portray her personal fears. And the names that she takes from the Greek mythology are by no means a random choice. Ancient times are thought of as heroic and are believed to be the cradle of todays civilization. To us their character is universal. Avoiding actualization Ivona Pleskonja reminds us that some things have not changed, that the man has remained the same, that the woman also feels the same - like the Amazon woman, the Wife, restrained and confined. Continuing her search, and cleansing herself of modern civilization, she finally discovers Nature. It is no coincidence that we see nature in her image; the image of a woman both confined and liberated at the same time, like Persephone." from "Return to humanity" by Aleksandra Mirčić, curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade