Katarina Zdjelar - Parapoetics

Opening: Thursday 3 December 2009


Parapoetics is the first large solo presentation by the young Rotterdam-based artist Katarina Zdjelar. Zdjelar (Belgrade, 1979) is rapidly gaining international acclaim for her work and is said to show great promise. Parapoetics brings together her video works from the past four years. Although language plays an important role in her video work, it is more the sound of the voice or the absence thereof that gives the work its eventual meaning. In videos such as Shoun (2009) and Everything Is Gonna Be (2008), the singing of pop songs becomes a piercing and yet contagious commentary on socio-political issues. The crooning and the silence of the main characters in the videos One or Two Songs on Someone or Something in Particular (2007) and In Unison (2009) appears to suggest a perspective in which freedom of meaning rather than freedom of speech prevails. Shoum, a work in which two Serbian musicians make a phonetic transcription of an English song.

In January 2010, a series of lectures and conversations will take 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), who has written extensively on the notion and importance of the voice. The exhibition is accompanied by a guidebook with a conversation between Zdjelar and Mariette Dölle on the works, and a Parapoetics Reader, designed by Koehorst in ‘t Veld. Claus Wiersma is responsible for the exhibition architecture.

Zdjelar has participated in many large group exhibitions (incl. If I Can’t Dance in MuhKa, Antwerp; Soft Manipulation in Casino Luxembourg, Luxemburg; and Morality in Witte de With, Rotterdam). In 2009 she represented Serbia in the Venice Biennale. Zdjelar studied at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2004-2006) and will be resident at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam from 2010.

The exhibition space TENT. regularly programmes larger solo exhibitions and thus draws attention to artists whose work enhances the artistic climate in Rotterdam. In 2008, TENT. presented a successful solo exhibition with work by Wendelien van Oldenborgh. In the spring of 2009, TENT. showed new work by Villeroy & Boch and Olaf Mooij.

Katarina Zdjelar - Parapoetics
Kurator: Mariette Dölle