Breakfast with the head
video work 11min 34sec, 2003

Having started with one of Manet’s painting, let us begin by examining the work of Isidora Ficovic, which represents a reinscenation of sorts of Manet’s Breakfast on the Grass. In this video recording, two clothed men and a naked woman realize a tableau vivant; the situation approaches the original as much as possible, only the actual items of food refer to the sort of breakfast characteristic of these parts: burek (a kind of cheese pie, translator’s note) and yogurt.
Still, the result does not boil down to striving for humorous effect through mere repetition with a difference, but by positioning, by way of mimicry, a high-culture topic in the real world of among real tensions: sexual, historical, habitual, etc. Hence the incomprehensible appearance of an object in the foreground (the “head” of the title – Breakfast with a Head), whose role here appears to be similar to that of the skull in Hans Hollbein’s Ambassadors, that is, the role of anamorphosis, which Lacan presents to us in a famous text of his as a specific dimension in the field of vision, a dimension not related to the view as such but somehow connected to the function of a lack, an appearance of a phallic ghost.

Text by Branislav Dimitrijević

From the catalogue “Strange point of Tension”, Winter Saloon in Herceg Novi, Public Museum of Montenegro 2004

Isidora Fićović is among the most influential and widely acclaimed artists of her generation in Serbia.

From drawing, painting, photography, performance, video art to multimedia installations in kaleidoscope of subjects, Isidora Fićović’s unique participatory works offer alluring spaces for thinking with unexpected connections exploring everyday life and occasions of different places, cities, countries, cultures as well as cartoons, movies, TV news or newspapers articles and metaphorical elements, examine the intersection of diverse subjects and controversy, and explore the boundary between the organic, actual and the artificial, virtual reality.

Having been raised partly in Yugoslavia, Isadora’s practice is influenced by various political, social and cultural manifestations of diverse nationalities, ethnic backgrounds and cultural transformations enabling her to understand necessity of change and vitality of thinking.

She recontextualises elements of everyday life such as social performance, rock an roll songs, music, history, movies and other art works, to create altogether new circumstances that shift the viewers consciousness and sense of time in contemporary space. Her work prompts an intensive engagement with the world and a fresh consideration of everyday life in ironic and experimental way.

The Work Samples spans Isidora’s diverse range of artistic production which includes installations, large scale environments, sculpture, photography, objects, painting, drawing, video and booklets, and rethinking of relations between those media.

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The installation of four paintings and five hundred “mousses” on the floor of FLU Gallery of the Faculty of Fine Arts Belgrade. The “mousses” are running in determinate direction towards black curtain.

The five hundred ‘’mousses” running in determinate direction towards black curtain are represented behind the curtain in virtual space. The digital video installation behind the curtain shows pointers (computer mousses) that are going fast in different track lines, as real mousses are running in the nature. The humorous way how to perceive actual and virtual reality that we are confronting almost everyday, at home, on our jobs, on streets, clubs and restaurants; using internet, mobile phones, software programs, video games, consuming advertisements on billboards, screens , television daily. Internet cafes are full of children playing virtual basketball games using mousses as tools for playing instead of hands on real courtyards with other children. All that is motivation for making installation with computer mousses interrogating digital and actual of the real.

The paintings are representations of the transformed human being into Ratman, under influence of digital incorporation into daily life.

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Colony 2001 was initiated during an acquaintance with Montenegro hotel-owner and investor  Nedeljko Burzanović Nedjo. Burzanovic sponsored the workshop aimed at production of artworks  intended for decoration of luxurious hotels along Montenegro Coast – hotels in Budva, Sutomore, Susanj and Bar  owned by Talas  Turs Company. Beside Isidora Fićović, leading the project in collaboration with Mr.Burzanovic, colony was attended by young Belgrade artists Pedja Terzić, Bane Jakić and Jamesdin.

A fact worth mentioning is that the whole project was  entirely produced by Talas  Tours, a company that made certain demands regarding the themes of paintings such as authentic seaside landscapes, images of Monastery of Ostrog, particular saints, etc.

Faced with such a chellenge, these Belgrade artists made quite successful works,depicting the taste of mainstream Montenegrin art public (and wider).

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The ambient installation of daily newspapers, Alan Ginsbergs poem“Howl” written on the walls, drawing and carpet of newspapers.

Daily newspapers without articles, just few pictures left. Alan Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” on the walls. Carpet made of newspapers. Drawing.The newspapers were bases of information about actual situation in Turkey and wider during residency period on Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center in Istanbul 2006. Unknowing Turkish language, informing was coming from pictures. The newspapers without texts with few pictures left; pictures of solders in cage also as terrorists attacks are fixed to the ground of studio, visually creating drawing with different character of lines. The work Open Space is metaphor. Actualizing political, economical,social and other aspects of everyday life. The installation is metaphor of collecting daily newspapers that was coming up in Istanbul in period September- October 2006; On the other hand writing of poem “Howl” on the walls evokes the period after WWII in USA. Allen Ginsberg is best known for his poem Howl, a long poem, attacking American values of the 1950s. The words of the poem are written on the walls in several big columns and every column with its form creates drawing. Newspapers are symbolizing actual time and space, existence in a curtain place and time, which is in this case Istanbul in autumn 2006. The words of the poem “Howl” on the walls are leading us back in time, in the period and atmosphere of fifties of 20thCentury on streets of NYC, period after Second World War. Bringing these two different periods, different places, different occasions and time in one installation, make us discover similarities and possible relations between those two contexts and specifics of the real. Representing present through rethinking past and rethinking past through actual moment.

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The Gallery’s space is transformed into ambient of artist’s bedroom with unfinished paintings inside in the process of emerging forms, TV in the corner with photo-session on, of the artist’s dressing in that bedroom, with sounds of the Iggy Pop’s album “Idiot” in the back, evoking the underground atmosphere.

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The ambient represents video and two paintings on the walls. Video work is 35 min long which suits to the statics of paintings. Artists made this ambinet installation as reconstruction of their lives with ritual characteristics of sounds and interchanging of pictures . Video shows photos from artists childhood, friends and parents, the intimacy of their lives. Each photo lasts for 30 sec  and interchanging is followed by sounds of the group Kayess. It experiments with memory and its processes of time in constructed context of ambient and loud sounds.