20.24 Katarina Zdjelar AAA ( Mein Herz )
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Her work explores the aesthetic, performative, and political significance of the voice, viewing language as both a vehicle for personal identity formation and a tool for political empowerment in the tension between private and public spaces. Here the body acts as both a performative medium and a resonant space for voice, song, and music, as exemplified by the videos Stimme (Voice, 2013) and The Perfect Sound (2009).
Zdjelar’s approach incorporates rehearsal techniques along with varied forms of vocal and musical performance, bringing together elements of improvisation, productive failure, and reinterpretation. This method shines through in works like Untitled (A Song) (2016), My Lifetime (Malaika) (2012), and Shoum (2009). In more recent pieces, including the installation Not A Pillar Not A Pile (2017/2020), she engages with pacifist and proto-feminist practices, drawing inspiration from figures like Käthe Kollwitz and Dore Hoyer.
Zdjelar’s video AAA (Mein Herz) (2016) shows a close-up of a young woman’s face as she looks directly into the camera; she performs four different musical compositions at once in a single, uninterrupted shot. There are no smooth, medley-like transitions here: instead the performer abruptly shifts between passages, each of which retains its unique style, tempo, rhythm, and tonality. Her facial expressions jerk, twist, and calm as she moves unpredictably through the languages—German, English and Polish. The performer is attempting the impossible: her singing is both about bridging the gaps between the fragments and about the precise interpretation of pieces that differ greatly in style and language. This creates a challenging experience for the listener, who is forced to either put the fragments together themselves like a jigsaw puzzle or try to associate them with a specific song. Yet the effort is constantly thwarted: Zdjelar creates a strange, contradictory soundscape woven from silence, music, noise, and language. As Zdjelar herself explains: “Similar to changing radio stations in search for the right song, the most rewarding and challenging aspect of bringing these compositions together in a single performance was in composing and performing interruptions which are the binding force at the same time.”¹
The nuances and subtleties of Zdjelar’s engagement with the human voice are what make her works complex and multifaceted. As the curators of the Acts of Voicing group exhibition at the Württembergischer Kunstverein describe: “The voice is difficult to grasp. Unlike the eye or the ear, it cannot be localized. Instead, it occurs through the ephemeral interplay of several organs. It is always inside and outside the body at the same time and is as intangible as it is socially and politically weighty. It utters both cries and speech, sense and nonsense, noise and song. It is never an instrument of articulation alone but always dovetails with action, with performativity.”²
In the video works shown here, it is primarily the dissonance between the visual and sound elements and the handling of interruptions and pauses that challenge our usual perceptual patterns. AAA (Mein Herz) emphasizes the corporeality of the voice and the facial expressions of the performer. The performer’s countenance becomes, as Zdjelar puts it, a visual “battlefield,” where the conflicting emotions of the musical pieces appear briefly (for a fraction of a second) before vanishing quickly, leaving us unable to fully interpret or read them. On a sound level, Zdjelar works with the principle of collage, fragmenting four musical pieces and recombining them into a new song. The result is a poetic cacophony that defies our Western listening habits, building a new narrative through deliberate accents. The original songs and their messages fade into the background; instead, the interruptions and pauses create (semantic) gaps that we are invited to fill with our own subjective associations.
Katarina Zdjelar’s video masterfully captures the fascination of the human voice and the diversity of music as a cultural medium. Placing performers in surprising settings and situations, she observes the expressiveness of the voice and its power with reduced cinematic means, much as a scientific experiment might. She choreographs her scenes carefully, blurring the line between process and outcome. Through the deconstruction of the music pieces, minimalist film techniques, and a focus on the performativity of the voice, she creates a poetic projection space that disrupts familiar patterns of perception and highlights the universality of cultural productivity. Her practice opens temporary and semantic discrepancies, opening spaces between expectation and surprise, choreography and improvisation. The result is temporal gaps and thematic depths that reveal themselves only upon closer inspection.
Katarina Zdjelar grew up in Belgrade; she lives and works between Belgrade and Rotterdam. She holds an MA in Visual Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and a degree from the University of Arts in Belgrade. She was also a two-year resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2019, Katarina Zdjelar represented Serbia, alongside Zoran Todorovic, at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the gallery SpazioA in Pistoia (2023); the Cultural Centre of Belgrade (2023); MSU in Zagreb (2022); the MMC KIBLA/KiBela in Maribor (2021); Oregon Contemporary in Portland (2021); Casino Luxembourg (2018); Salzburger Kunstverein (2018); Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne (2016); and Kunstverein Bielefeld (2014). Her work has featured in numerous group exhibitions, including those at the Wildwuchs Festival at Kaserne Basel (2023); Garage Rotterdam (2022); Museum of African Art in Belgrade (2022); Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp (2021); Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna (2021); Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht (2020); the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020); HMKV in Dortmund (2020); Museion in Bolzano (2019); and Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (2019). She is a recent recipient of the 24th Zagreb Salon’s MMSU Award (2019), the Dolf Henkes Prijs (2017), and was twice shortlisted for the Dutch Prix de Rome Award (2017, 2010).
Zdjelar’s approach incorporates rehearsal techniques along with varied forms of vocal and musical performance, bringing together elements of improvisation, productive failure, and reinterpretation. This method shines through in works like Untitled (A Song) (2016), My Lifetime (Malaika) (2012), and Shoum (2009). In more recent pieces, including the installation Not A Pillar Not A Pile (2017/2020), she engages with pacifist and proto-feminist practices, drawing inspiration from figures like Käthe Kollwitz and Dore Hoyer.
Zdjelar’s video AAA (Mein Herz) (2016) shows a close-up of a young woman’s face as she looks directly into the camera; she performs four different musical compositions at once in a single, uninterrupted shot. There are no smooth, medley-like transitions here: instead the performer abruptly shifts between passages, each of which retains its unique style, tempo, rhythm, and tonality. Her facial expressions jerk, twist, and calm as she moves unpredictably through the languages—German, English and Polish. The performer is attempting the impossible: her singing is both about bridging the gaps between the fragments and about the precise interpretation of pieces that differ greatly in style and language. This creates a challenging experience for the listener, who is forced to either put the fragments together themselves like a jigsaw puzzle or try to associate them with a specific song. Yet the effort is constantly thwarted: Zdjelar creates a strange, contradictory soundscape woven from silence, music, noise, and language. As Zdjelar herself explains: “Similar to changing radio stations in search for the right song, the most rewarding and challenging aspect of bringing these compositions together in a single performance was in composing and performing interruptions which are the binding force at the same time.”¹
The nuances and subtleties of Zdjelar’s engagement with the human voice are what make her works complex and multifaceted. As the curators of the Acts of Voicing group exhibition at the Württembergischer Kunstverein describe: “The voice is difficult to grasp. Unlike the eye or the ear, it cannot be localized. Instead, it occurs through the ephemeral interplay of several organs. It is always inside and outside the body at the same time and is as intangible as it is socially and politically weighty. It utters both cries and speech, sense and nonsense, noise and song. It is never an instrument of articulation alone but always dovetails with action, with performativity.”²
In the video works shown here, it is primarily the dissonance between the visual and sound elements and the handling of interruptions and pauses that challenge our usual perceptual patterns. AAA (Mein Herz) emphasizes the corporeality of the voice and the facial expressions of the performer. The performer’s countenance becomes, as Zdjelar puts it, a visual “battlefield,” where the conflicting emotions of the musical pieces appear briefly (for a fraction of a second) before vanishing quickly, leaving us unable to fully interpret or read them. On a sound level, Zdjelar works with the principle of collage, fragmenting four musical pieces and recombining them into a new song. The result is a poetic cacophony that defies our Western listening habits, building a new narrative through deliberate accents. The original songs and their messages fade into the background; instead, the interruptions and pauses create (semantic) gaps that we are invited to fill with our own subjective associations.
Katarina Zdjelar’s video masterfully captures the fascination of the human voice and the diversity of music as a cultural medium. Placing performers in surprising settings and situations, she observes the expressiveness of the voice and its power with reduced cinematic means, much as a scientific experiment might. She choreographs her scenes carefully, blurring the line between process and outcome. Through the deconstruction of the music pieces, minimalist film techniques, and a focus on the performativity of the voice, she creates a poetic projection space that disrupts familiar patterns of perception and highlights the universality of cultural productivity. Her practice opens temporary and semantic discrepancies, opening spaces between expectation and surprise, choreography and improvisation. The result is temporal gaps and thematic depths that reveal themselves only upon closer inspection.
Katarina Zdjelar grew up in Belgrade; she lives and works between Belgrade and Rotterdam. She holds an MA in Visual Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and a degree from the University of Arts in Belgrade. She was also a two-year resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2019, Katarina Zdjelar represented Serbia, alongside Zoran Todorovic, at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the gallery SpazioA in Pistoia (2023); the Cultural Centre of Belgrade (2023); MSU in Zagreb (2022); the MMC KIBLA/KiBela in Maribor (2021); Oregon Contemporary in Portland (2021); Casino Luxembourg (2018); Salzburger Kunstverein (2018); Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne (2016); and Kunstverein Bielefeld (2014). Her work has featured in numerous group exhibitions, including those at the Wildwuchs Festival at Kaserne Basel (2023); Garage Rotterdam (2022); Museum of African Art in Belgrade (2022); Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp (2021); Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna (2021); Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht (2020); the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020); HMKV in Dortmund (2020); Museion in Bolzano (2019); and Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (2019). She is a recent recipient of the 24th Zagreb Salon’s MMSU Award (2019), the Dolf Henkes Prijs (2017), and was twice shortlisted for the Dutch Prix de Rome Award (2017, 2010).
www.katarinazdjelar.net
Text Cynthia Krell
Translation Amy Patton
AAA (Mein Herz), 2016
Video, color, sound
4:30 min.
Courtesy of the artist and SpazioA, Pistoia.
¹ From e-mail correspondence with the artist on November 2, 2024.
² Exhib. cat. Stuttgart. Acts of Voicing, ed. Christ, Hans D., Dressler, Iris, Peters, Christine, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Leipzig 2014, p. 15.
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Text Cynthia Krell
Translation Amy Patton
AAA (Mein Herz), 2016
Video, color, sound
4:30 min.
Courtesy of the artist and SpazioA, Pistoia.
¹ From e-mail correspondence with the artist on November 2, 2024.
² Exhib. cat. Stuttgart. Acts of Voicing, ed. Christ, Hans D., Dressler, Iris, Peters, Christine, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Leipzig 2014, p. 15.