Neda R - AlexaKoko

Neda Radoicic

Art historian and Curator

In 1967, Guy Debord asserted that in the society of the spectacle, false archaic oppositions, various regionalisms and discrimination are revived, serving as the means of gaining a superior status within the consumer hierarchy. The ruling elite is shaping a twisted world and abusing its power to impose such a constrained perspective. Nowadays, in the domination of a multitude of different truths, the erosion of trust is witnessed. Visual artist Aleksandra Kokotović deals with the reflection of the phases of identity transformation from the perspective of the refugees from tragic global events caused by wars and the dynamics of their internal re-examinations, which incites a disturbing complexity. The artist expresses the narratives of alienation and cultural displacement in order to express public testimony and an array of difficulties related to proper reintegration into the social tissue. She is engaged in the spheres of interaction between the vicissitudes of belonging and unbelonging. The artist meaningfully operates with objects from the domain of military equipment, such as barbed wire, bombs, fighter planes, in order to imply the all-encompassing fears related to the raging wars and to elicit awareness. Deals in the domain of the aesthetics of the robust in order to express the socio-political implications of "unusualness." In some works of smaller format, the influence of Dubuffet's raw art in the admixture of the ideals of primeval primitivism and the automatism of surrealism is noticeable.

Beauty and ugliness emerge as symptoms of moral values, or their absence, Christian iconography of sacrifice and the ideals of Stoicism. In the poetic limitations and deprivations, maneuverings at the crossroads of history, and mysticism emerge the reminiscences of Antoni Tàpies. The author creates an archetypal painting of the expression of the collective subconscious and an existentially endangered individual. The form is still structured on her canvases. She leaves varying unpainted surfaces on the canvases that allude to the desert canvas of the Nazca geoglyphs in Peru. The works acquire a distinct experimental dynamic through the creation of collage segments, implementing newspaper clippings and fragments of photographs, suggesting three-dimensionality, and creating a sensitive atmosphere. In this cycle of works, she applied a completely innovative unique technique of work by initially impregnating the linen cloth with Titian's method, subsequently printing graphics on the mentioned newspaper clippings, and then creating a collage background over which she intervened by painting clothes using pastels, ink, acrylic and charcoal. Line structure and graphic cross-hatching dominate. The use of blurred, distinctly black contours is an expression of the cruelty of today's society, and it amplifies the tension of the work. The whitish line that extends through the works as the least common denominator emphasizes the essence. It can be interpreted as the expression of expectancy and the sense of serenity that transforms, transcends, and purifies the entire composition. The diminishment of color and the muted tonalities emphasize the ascetic character, emptiness, nothingness and fears.

Focusing on the eye alludes to the All-Seeing Eye, to certain esoteric symbols of secret societies, but also warns that in each of us there is still a particle of the same eye that testifies and remembers. Fixes the gaze on the observer so that it hints the character of testimony. In art, an eye can express the function of individual vision, the power of superhuman vision or the mood of spiritual understanding. People generally have a tendency to read a man's thoughts and secret intentions from his face and from his gaze, so that the observer is disturbed if he is unable to see the model's face. The majority of the presented characters have veils of secrecy related to their identity. Partially concealed faces allude the defense mechanisms that we permanently employ in daily life in order to survive. Indications of geometric elements point to cosmic relations and transcendence. In the work titled "Unstable Ground: Figuring TooMany Dinner Parties", the artist alludes to Leonardo's fresco of the Last Supper, and elaborates a religious theme, but alternates it from the biblical principles, by introducing the figure of Mary Magdalene next to Jesus Christ. A whole range of contemporary signs and ancient symbols is implemented on the clothes, inspired by the influences of the Renaissance maestro. The artist points to democracy, capitalism, fascism, tyranny, liberalism, anarchy, socialism, technocracy, communism, idealism, nationalism and feminism as the twelve apostles of the modern world.

Kokotović's artistic endeavor is a kind of rebellion against everything that is false in the existing. The embodiment of horrifying human loneliness, bewildered by fear and sufferings imposed by the cruelty of the social system. Ubiquitous apathy and anxiety spring from the feelings of instability, inevitability and uncertainty. The works represent a seismogram of shaken beliefs and mental states. With the cycle of paintings "Fragile Society", Aleksandra Kokotović realizes a peculiar kaleidoscope, but without euphemism, that reflects the metaphor of comprehensive cultural atrophy. It levitates on the traces in the wake of critical awareness, in whose interdependences a distinctive poetry of survival can be discerned.