The exhibition “Waste Land” by prominent Montenegrin sculptor and contemporary artist Ivana Radovanović was officially opened last night at Kolektor, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro.

In her address, the exhibition’s curator Milica Bezmarević emphasized that Ivana Radovanović’s latest works “clearly inscribe themselves in the theoretical discourse that art theorist Rosalind Krauss defines as the expanded field of sculpture—a space in which sculpture is no longer a closed object, but a differential practice of relations.”

“Instead of the self-sufficiency of form and beyond the modernist notion of its autonomy,” Bezmarević stated, “the artist’s works highlight processuality and reveal sculpture as a site of interweaving between the natural and the artificial, the material and the symbolic, where sculpture no longer appears as a closed object, but as a relational practice that builds its meaning through the relationships and contexts into which it is inscribed.”

Reflecting on the exhibition’s central piece, Bezmarević noted that the artist “explores the boundaries of contemporary sculpture—from the stable, closed object of modernist tradition to an ephemeral, processual form in which material, space, and time equally participate in shaping meaning. Through processes of decay and transformation of materials such as jute, earth, sugar, and terracotta, Radovanović views sculpture as an event and a testimony to transience rather than a permanent form. Installations such as Composition and the central work Waste Land demonstrate how materials, through disintegration and transformation, become active carriers of meaning, memory, and remembrance.”

Bezmarević concluded by observing that Radovanović points to sculpture as a space where different dimensions meet—stable and fragile, visible and invisible: “It is within this zone that the truth of her work emerges—a truth not given in form, but in process and transformation.”

Artist Ivana Radovanović also addressed the audience, expressing her gratitude to the team of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro for their support in realizing the exhibition, and in particular to curator Milica Bezmarević for her “dedicated work and thoughtful, open approach that gave this project its distinctive quality.”

Ivana Radovanović is a sculptor and contemporary artist of international standing. She graduated in 2006 from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Montenegro in Cetinje, Department of Sculpture, completed her master’s degree there in 2009, and earned a doctorate from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 2016.

She is a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship for postdoctoral research in New York (2018/2019) and was the first artist from the region to be accepted into the Silvermine Fulbright Art Residency Program in the United States (2019). Radovanović represented Montenegro at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and has held more than twenty solo exhibitions in Montenegro and abroad, including in Italy, Finland, Slovenia, Austria, and the United States. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, residencies, and workshops across Europe and America.

Her many awards include the Grand Prix at the 37th Montenegrin Art Salon “13 November” (2015), the Young Artists Biennial (BJCEM) Award in Milan (2015), and an Honorary Recognition from the International Sculpture Center, USA (2023).

The exhibition “Waste Land” will remain open to visitors at Kolektor until 29 September 2025.