07 Jan 2010

Katarina Zdjelar at TENT.Rotterdam

KATARINA ZDJELAR - PARAPOETICS
Solo exhibition, to 7 February 2010

Parapoetics is the first major solo exhibition in the Netherlands by Rotterdam-based artist Katarina Zdjelar (Belgrade, 1979), who is rapidly gaining international acclaim for her work. TENT. regularly programmes larger solo exhibitions of artists whose work enhances the artistic climate in Rotterdam.

Language and the geo-political
Parapoetics brings together a number of video works by Katarina Zdjelar from the past four years in which she uses the singing, pronunciation, alteration or forgetting of language to examine geo-political issues, and notions of identity, authority and community. For example, in Everything Is Gonna Be (2008), the Beatles song Revolution, is transferred into a place in Norway where it is sung by an amateur choir group. Their soothing way of singing the chorus forces the song to take a disturbingly uncritical tone. The work reveals both the critical distance to upheaval in the lyrics, and the ideological distance between the meaning of the song and the middle-aged people that appear in the work. Also, in the video where Zdjelar asks older Albanians to pronounce the words they remember in Russian, it becomes clear what language is able to reveal. The falling apart of an old regime is mirrored by the leftover fragments of language stored in people's minds.

Zdjelar has participated in many large group exhibitions (incl. If I Can't Dance in MuHKA, Antwerp; Soft Manipulation in x Luxembourg, Luxemburg; and Morality in Witte de With, Rotterdam). In 2009 she represented Serbia in the Venice Biennial. Zdjelar studied at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and is resident at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam from 2010.

The exhibition is accompanied by a guidebook with a conversation between Zdjelar and curator Mariette Dölle on the works, and a Parapoetics Reader, designed by Koehorst in 't Veld. Claus Wiersma is responsible for the exhibition architecture.

Parallel Program in January
In January 2010, a series of lectures and conversations takes place in which Zdjelar brings ideas that relate to her work up for discussion. For this, Katarina Zdjelar invites speakers such as performer/ writer Caroline Bergvall (London), sociologist Willem Schinkel (Rotterdam) and philosopher Mladen Dolar (Ljubljana). Dates are 08.01: Mladen Dolar; 14.01: Willem Schinkel, Caroline Bergvall; 28.01: Screening; 04.02: Frans-Willem Korsten.

TENT. in Rotterdam
Since 1999, TENT. presents Rotterdam contemporary art aiming at identifying tendencies and correlations in the local art world. TENT. continues striving to put the quality of Rotterdam first and foremost in the exhibitions, and to put the clichés – which are always inevitable – about local art to the test. In short, TENT. chooses for a content driven programme that is geared towards the current globalized society. Amongst the artists showing their work in TENT at an early stage in their artistic career are: Marc Bijl, Erik van Lieshout, Jonas Staal, Marjolijn Dijkman, Kimberly Clark. Solo projects include Wendelien van Oldenborgh.

www.tentrotterdam.nl