Hristina Ivanoska and Yane Calovski
56th Venice Biennial, Pavilion of the Republic of Macedonia
„We are all in this alone“
Curated by Basak Senova, Commissioner: Maja Nedelkoska Brzanova, National Gallery of Macedonia, Deputy Commissioner: Olivia Stoilkova, Deputy Curator: Maja Cankulovska Mihajlovska
9 May – 22 November, 2015, Pavilion at Arsenale – Sale d’Armi, 56th Venice Biennial, Pavilion of the Republic of Macedonia
While asking what constitutes contemporary saintliness and how do we produce ourselves today via contemporary socio-political conditions, We are all in this alone by Hristina Ivanoska and Yane Calovski, references a number of intricate sources: a fresco painting from the church of “St. Gjorgi” in Kurbinovo painted by an unknown author in the XII century, as well as writings by Simone Weil, Luce Irigaray, and recently discovered personal notes by Paul Thek dating from the 1970s. While searching for political values in the representations of formal aesthetic and literary sources, the work carries a specific urgency to articulate ways we continuously engage and disengage the past and the present, questioning the notion of faith within socio-politics and economic realities.
Ivanoska’s drawings and objects are inspired by the texts of Simone Weil and Luce Irigaray. While Weil questions her faith in God, considering it as a personal decision and path that one goes thought alone, Irigaray in her text “La Mystérique” from the book Speculum de l’autre femme (1974) explains the emotional and inexplicable (love) relation toward God. Irigaray asks: But how does one tackle these things, even if one feels passionately about them, if there is no sense of vocation?
Calovski’s drawings and collages refer to recently discovered correspondence of Paul Thek, addressing the difficulty to survive while creating producing, and maintaining ones own work and keeping faith in the idealism of collaborative production. Addressing the value of hidden poetics in the details positioned well beyond the mundane clichés of one’s own need to produce language, Calovski literally paints invisible (erased) icons, procured through the physical disposal of the image as a religious symbol.
Incorporating also a short film, as a prelude, the work further addresses faith as an emotional and an intellectual condition, and also a contemporary socio-political anomaly, in the same time.
Hristina Ivanoska and Yane Chalovski are collaborating since 2000. Their projects animate multilayered conceptual possibilities through intense associations questioning the dynamic and the artistic practice. Inspired by accumulated knowledge, intuitive references, historical and present day contexts, simultaneously, both of them engaged in their individual directions, then coming together are developing an unusual logic of the nature and their continual collaboration. They are represented by Zak Branicka, Berlin.
Basak Senova is a curator and designer. She studied Literature and Graphic Design (MFA in Graphic Design and Ph.D. in Art, Design and Architecture at Bilkent University) and attended the 7th Curatorial Training Programme of Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam. She has been writing on art, technology and media, initiating and developing projects and curating exhibitions since 1995. Senova was the curator of the Pavilion of Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale and she co-curated the UNCOVERED (Cyprus), 2nd Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-0 ARK Underground (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Helsinki Photography Biennial 2014. Recently, she acts as the Art Gallery Chair of (ACM) SIGGRAPH 2014 (Vancouver).
http://nationalgallery.mk/la-bienale-di-venezia