Ivana Pegan

The Forbidden City, 2024

From the text by Helena Puhara:

“Despite being a trained sculptor, Ivana Pegan creates her artworks in different mediums, while words, i.e. written, typed, spoken or sung voices, become...

From the text by Helena Puhara:

“Despite being a trained sculptor, Ivana Pegan creates her artworks in different mediums, while words, i.e. written, typed, spoken or sung voices, become her primary working tools. She might shape her signature artistic expression for gallery spaces and their knowledgeable audiences or for randomly selected public spaces with equal enthusiasm. The Forbidden City is an art form intended for and adapted to the radio audience. Here, as in most of her works, Ivana will use words, sung or spoken, like pigment, applying it, lending it shape and form, in quick strokes or long, with outstretched or short movements of the brush. The words will articulate warmth or coldness, in perceptual layers, suggestively and hypnotically. The spoken or sung voices are thus transformed from a primary, ethereal and fluid form, into a ‘materialized’ invisible object possessed of its own volume, and physically feel in space. In her work, Ivana will often intertwine Hrvoje Pejaković’s poetry alongside her own texts and verses, creating entirely new melancholic spaces in which this adopted spoken word becomes both immanently universal and deeply personal. The Forbidden City is a contemplative description of the soul, measured by the metric of the city.”

texts: Hrvoje Pejaković and Ivana Pegan
idea and recording by: Ivana Pegan
director: Ante Vlahinić
Special thanks to artist Jelena Milušić for vocals on Who Will Love Me Now)

North Corner, 2021

The thematic backbone is the exploration of subjective space. Through the relationship between photography and language, I open up the possibility of viewing photography as a performative medium. I incorporate...

Once upon a time, 2018–2020

The photographic diptychs from the series are action-based, procedural low-budget small-format works, created in a room with the means at my disposal. I choose photos from my own archive...

The photographic diptychs from the series are action-based, procedural low-budget small-format works, created in a room with the means at my disposal. I choose photos from my own archive intuitively and on the basis of associations and autobiographical implications. Using prints on drawing papers, I paint the subjective space and time in which I include my voice.

Inclined over my longing and my twilights, I leave my own trace by imprinting my idea of life as an endless series of anticipations.

A Thousand Words, 2017

The series was created on the occasion of the promotion of the author’s artist’s book Deserted Words, published in the Book art edition, Art Workshop Lazareti 2016.

...

The series was created on the occasion of the promotion of the author’s artist’s book Deserted Words, published in the Book art edition, Art Workshop Lazareti 2016.

The book is a follow-up to the spoken word work project Lead Me, produced as part of the wider project “City candidate: Disclosure” and performed in a public space on the occasion of Dubrovnik’s candidacy for the European Capital of Culture. During the visit to the location, visitors were given an audio player, and could choose the language and/or the guide so that while walking and looking around, they could listen to the Voice, inviting them to perform various actions that introduce them to their personal search for the one with whom/what they can establish a relationship. By enhancing the experience in relation to the event, the aim was to try to change the way visitors observe and see the scenes of the city and the people around them.

The thematic backbone of the A Thousand Words series is the research of photography as a performative medium, and the possibilities of experience and comprehension through the relationship between photography and language, voice and speech.

DU TV, 2010

The author photographs a television set at the moment broadcasting the Dubrovnik Television programme. The TV camera is placed up inside the Bell Tower broadcasting a live transmission from...

The author photographs a television set at the moment broadcasting the Dubrovnik Television programme. The TV camera is placed up inside the Bell Tower broadcasting a live transmission from the main pedestrian street, Stradun. Pegan notices the emptiness and the rare passers-by who appear on TV in solitary motion, on a rainy day in ‘the street of the world’.

The series of black-and-white descriptions of winter, rain, and the emptiness of the City, stripped of all superfluousness and calm in the presence of ‘itself’, is created in a single day. In a conceptual move, Pegan creates photographic images that are a testament to reality, documents, notes. They function in the realm of pure spirit. The image is not sharp, abstracting, deep, grainy, etc. It examines the invisible in the visible. A photographic image is a minimalist work with layers of meaning. The artist portrays Dubrovnik, which carries a wound just like any other city in the world, but also has its own existence that is constantly happening.

Petra Golušić

Glass morning, 2004

Glass Morning is a performative and autobiographical series. It traces an existence in one time and space and depicts an infinity of small possibilities of their permeation.

...

Glass Morning is a performative and autobiographical series. It traces an existence in one time and space and depicts an infinity of small possibilities of their permeation.

The spoken word audio work Mindness, a 7-inch vinyl produced in collaboration with Art Workshop Lazareti Dubrovnik and MMSU Rijeka and co-financed by the City of Dubrovnik, was published in 2018 as a booklet accompanying a vinyl record.

From the vantage point of time of two times 7 years, it transmits the content and performance of a sonic work in a visual code.

Insert from the text by Ksenija Orelj:

"Even in her most recent works, Mindness and Put your faith in, Ivana remains preoccupied with voice, with that wondrous instrument that enables us to form relations that surpass semantics, relations based on meaning and intuition. We listen to bits of communicative exchanges and hear reflections of inner states; we listen to what is audible, but we hear things that remain unspoken, things that may be recognized in vibrations and resonances, in those 'silent' gaps, or in those moments when voice fades away or melts with other sounds. We follow the stretches of Ivana’s vocal choreographies, from soft utterings to ecstatic assertions; from gentle tones to more determined ones. Her voice is both supple and raw, what makes it different from a voice of a professional speaker. It sounds potentially seductive and so attracts our attention. Sometimes it comes across as vulnerable, at other times bitter. Occasionally it is peaceful or inquisitive and sounds as if on a quest. Her voice is pursuing reconciliation with its 'ghostlike' substitute, at the same time trying to keep its ironic distance. It takes us into an almost random vortex of affirmative, inquisitive and imperative forms so we are left wondering: is this a cry for interaction or a command disguised as polite request? This discrepancy between the attempt of revealing oneself and the resistance to being exposed defines that zone of ambiguity that we step into when we relate to others, when we neither loosen up completely nor oppose directly but rather reserve some space for possible retreat in order to keep distance and protect our personal space. In order to remain clearheaded… Yet, Ivana leaves this moderation, as a standard of implicit speech and social acceptability, aside. Instead, she employs humor and irony and plays with our fears of losing the 'proper' mechanisms of defending our personal space. 'I betray. You?... I lick…. You?... Long live freedom...'."

About author

Ivana Pegan graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, the Sculpture Department, in the class of prof. Šime Vulas, in 1996. She is a member of the Croatian Association of Independent Artists, the Croatian Association of Visual Artists Dubrovnik, the Lazareti Art Workshop Dubrovnik and the arts organisation Tkivo. Since 2014, she runs the Flora Gallery of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists Dubrovnik, which also deals with art restoration. She has lived and worked in Dubrovnik since 1998.

In her recent work, she uses photography, language, writing, speech, and voice, finding expression in the media of artist’s books, poetic objects, audio and video works. Through diary entries, fragmentary texts, poetry, short stories, and grammar quizzes, as well as through visual and sound works (spoken word), she examines in her own voice the ways in which the subject is constituted, focusing on the emotional, mental and vocal potential of exceeding social conventions and established boundaries.

RECENT WORKS / EXHIBITIONS / PERFORMANCES IN PUBLIC SPACE (2016–2024)

SOLO

2024

Nobody, Otok Gallery, Art Workshop Lazareti, curator: Petra Golušić

2022

Somewhere, MOMAD, Dubrovnik, curator: Petra Golušić

Seeing Voice, Arget, Belgrade Cultural Centre, with Alia Zaparova, curator Mia Ćuk

2021

Acoustics in Me, Flora Gallery, Dubrovnik

2020

Hard Rain, Kamba Garage, Zagreb

2019

Who Are You?, Guest artist in Museum Setup, concept: Ivana Pegan, Dubrovnik, Rector’s Palace, Natural History Museum, Maritime Museum, ‘Rupe’ Ethnographic Museum

Guide me, Bucharest, Ivan Gallery, (with Cristina David)

2018

My Testament, site-specific work in progress, Dubrovnik, Flora Gallery

Mindness, Marin Držić Theatre, audio performance, and vinyl / artist’s book presentation

2017

Voice and Nothing Else, Vasko Lipovac Gallery, University Library Split

The Dark Places, ambient installation, performance, Museum Quartier Vienna, Raum D

Mindness, Eurodom Osijek, PopUp33

Deserted Words, Otok Gallery, ARL, Dubrovnik

2016

Alphabet… ambience… accusative… acoustics… anthology, Croatian Radio Chanel 3, Slika od zvuka, editor: Evelina Turković

Put Four Faith In, Audio sculpture in public space, Dubrovnik, Grad je mrtav. Živio grad! ARL

Guide Me, Dubrovnik’s candidacy for European Capital of Culture: “Disclosure”, audio work in public space

GROUP CONCEPT / FESTIVALS

2024

The Visible Ones, Museum of Fine Arts Split

The Visible Ones, MOMAD Dubrovnik

2023

The Visible Ones, MSU Zagreb

Before Us, Kazamat Gallery, Osijek, curators: Helena Puhara and Slaven Tolj

Art War, Warm Festival, Sarajevo, curator: Slaven Tolj

Before Us, Kazamat Gallery, Osijek

2022

Sudbina, Otok Gallery, Dubrovnik, curator: Slaven Tolj

For I Have Known Them..., Flora Gallery, Dubrovnik, curator: Slaven Tolj

2021

Porečko anale: Krasti bogu dane, Pula, Sabornica, curator: Ksenija Orelj

Oslobađanje otoka: Festival Vizura Aperta, Vis, curator: Davorka Perić

2020

Second City, selection of works by contemporary artists from Split and Dubrovnik, Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, curators: Rozana Vojvoda and Jasmina Babić

Mental Ecology: A study of Human Influence on Man, Festival Vizura Aperta, curator: Davorka Perić

2019

Abandonment/Acceptance, Vizura Aperta Festival: Janjina, Lastovo, curator: Davorka Perić

Body on Fire, Cellars of Diocletian’s Palace, HULU Split, curator: Marko Stamenković

2018

Instruction for Watching – What the Body Wants, MMSU Rijeka, curators: Vilma Bartolić, Ksenija Orelj, Sabina Salamon, Nataša Šuković

Edges of the City, Edges of the Sea, Contemporary Dubrovnik Scene, Kazamat Gallery, Osijek, curator: Rozana Vojvoda

Horrors of the Homeland, Sponza Palace, Dubrovnik, curators: Groma Curatorial Collective

2017

Views / Perspectives, NOMAD – pop-up pavilion in public space, Dubrovnik, Pošta Lapad, 30.3. artistic action / artist’s book, curators: PLACA Association – Spatial exploration collective

Silent Scream: I can only whisper the whole story in your ear, Podroom Gallery, Belgrade Cultural Centre, curators: Ksenija Orelj and Nataša Šuković, MMSU Rijeka

May Your Cushion Be a Stone…, Almissa open art festival, Omiš, curator: Slaven Tolj

Veze, Vizura Aperta Festival, Janjina

2016

Tourism, Vizura Aperta Festival, Zlarin, curator: Davorka Perić

Challenges of Humanism – 51^st Zagreb Salon

We Need It – We Do It, Biennale Architettura 2016, Reporting from the Front, Venice, curator Slaven Tolj

PUBLICATIONS

2017 Mindness, book accompanied by 7-inch vinyl, co-published by author, ARL and MMSU Rijeka

2016 Deserted Words, collection Knjige umjetnika, published by ARL

2016 Lead Me, audio guide for project “Disclosure” / Dubrovnik’s candidacy for European Capital of Culture 2020

SCHOLARSHIPS/ RESIDENTIAL PROGRAMMES

2017 Beč, Museum Quartier, Q21 Artist in residence programme, BMEIA / 2002 New York, Art Omi International Artists’ Residency / 2001 Cite International des Arts Paris / 2001 Artslink Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center