Exhibition Opening at Francis Colburn Gallery, UVM

UTILE TIES, exhibition by Željka Blakšić AKA Gita Blak and Lily Moebes for the Mollie Ruprecht Fellowship at University of Vermont. “Utile Ties” refers to the artists’ shared interest in the radical potential of usefulness and the utilitarian. Their work situates everyday objects and processes within an embodied idea of usefulness, particularly a gendered, working body, with an immediacy that suggests a need to dismantle conventional forms as well as an optimism in their undoing.

“Utile Ties” will be on display at the Francis Colburn Gallery from March 19th.

Please join us for an artist talk and opening reception at 6PM on Wednesday March 20th.

"Patterns from Nature" premiere at Hunter College - Lang Recital Hall

On the 16th of October film "Cracks", part of the multimedia performance "Patterns from Nature" will be presented with live chamber music. In this work composer Quinsin Nachoff joins forces with physicist Dr Stephen Morris and filmmakers Udo Prinsen, Tina de Groot, Lee Hutzulak and Gita Blak. Premiere performance is set for Monday, 8pm at Hunter College - Lang Recital Hall. Blending jazz and classical elements, the compositions are performed live by a chamber ensemble featuring woodwinds, brass, percussion, piano, string quartet, bass, drum set, and conductor.

If Work- IATP exhibition opening at Anonymus Gallery

AUGUST 3rd- 19th

If Work brings into conversation artists, curators and writers who have spent the past year investigating the relationship between art and labor for the 2022-23 Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program. Its title is drawn from IATP’s Distinguished Faculty Guest Julia Bryan-Wilson and her text Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, which traces the development of the ‘art worker’ in the 1970s as a collective political identity. What the category implies, she argues, is that the labor of art has shifted from a focus on the processes of artmaking and towards the broader socio-political matrices in which artists produce. The writings of philosopher Herbert Marcuse are identified as exercising particular influence on this transition, as he believed that revolution should synthesize work and art: “If work were accompanied by a reactivation of pre-genital polymorphous eroticism, then it would tend to become gratifying in itself without losing its work content.” That is, if work were combined with instinctual gratification—play—then it would be pleasurable without losing productivity, a bulwark against alienated labor.

ARTISTS: Annabelle heckler, Brett Ginsburg, Chris Kojzar, Željka Blakšić AKA Gita Blak, Kayla Weisdorf, Kearra Amaya Gopee
Li-Ming Hu, Lily Moebes, Naomi Lisiki

CURATORS: Francesca Altamura and Miranda Samuels

PUBLICATION: Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki

Based in New York City and supported by Jack Shainman Gallery…

––Words by Christine Bootes, 2022–23 IATP Cohort

The Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program

Based in New York City, The Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program is designed to facilitate the examination of both dominant and under-recognized epistemological frameworks that inform the system of art, including its production, consumption, distribution, and exhibition.

The 2022-2023 seminars will examine themes around art and labor. Within this framework, we will focus on historical, political, and aesthetic perspectives related to conventional and non-conventional notions of art and labor practices. Particular attention will be paid to: the historical materialist method and critiques of the euro centrism there within; organized and spontaneous labor movements and their theorists; theories of class constitution and formation; intersections between class and identity formations; and the vexed relationship between postmodern theory and materialist analysis.

#JackShainmanGallery

Ildiko Butler Gallery @ Fordham University

August 2020

Connect the Dots

SERIES OF PRINTS

by: Željka Blakšic AKA Gita Blak 

https://fordhamuniversitygalleries.com/artwork/4777411-eljka-Blak-ic-AKA-Gita-Blak.html

Connect the Dots by Željka Blakšic started years ago as a drawing game made for a Game Night series of free public events presenting artist-made games, organized by Sheetal Prajapati and Anna Harsanyi at Soho20 Gallery in New York City. Participants were invited to connect the dots in order to reveal and discover a female revolutionary portrait. All the women represented in the series of prints played a pivotal role in their community and later society; as activists, theorists, educators and politicians in launching the revolution or bringing in a monumental social change that enriched the lives of many. Here we remember them and celebrate their bravery, selflessness, dedication and complexity.

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Lakshmi Sahgal (Captain Lakshmi)
Polymer relief print on Arches Cover 
13 x 18 inches 
Printed by Ruth Lingen at Line Press Ltd and published by Planthouse Gallery

Symposium / Biennale Matter Of Art (17th May - 18th May)

Who are We Talking With? What Can Institutions (Un)Learn from Artists?
symposium organized as part of the first edition of the
Biennale Matter of Art / Ve věci umění held in Prague, Czech Republic.

Participants: tranzit.cz – Tereza Stejskalová, Vít Havránek, Veronika Janatková (CZ), Krytyka Polityczna - Igor Stokfiszewski (PL), Željka Blakšić alias Gita Blak (HR), James & Brea McAnnaly/ The Luminary (USA), Emília Rigová (SK), Andang Kelana (ID), Sráč Sam (CZ), Jiří Skála (CZ), Ruti Sela (ILl), Chto Delat - Dmitry Vilensky (RU), Alarm - Saša Uhlová, Jan Bělíček (CZ), Illia Gladshtein (UA), Mark Wilson (United Kingdom), Alex Martinis Roe (GB), Jonas Staal (NL), Marcus Steinweg (DE), Lucy Lopez (GB)
Moderators: Tereza Stöckelová, Igor Stokfiszewski, James McAnnaly, Anna Remešová

During the symposium, artists, art ensembles and delegates from art institutions will meet to debate issues concerning cultural projects, institutions and audiences.

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(Un)Commoning Voices & (Non)Communal Bodies – 26th of April at Reading, UK

26/04/19 — 02/06/19

Curated by Maayan Sheleff and Sarah Spies.

Zbyněk Baladrán, Željka Blakšić, Marco Godoy, Mikhail Karikis, Tali Keren, Rory Pilgrim, Jack Tan, and Katarina Zdjelar

OpenHand OpenSpace

(Un)Commoning Voices & (Non)Communal Bodies is a series of workshops, performances, and an exhibition, interrogating the relationship between artistic practices and protest movements via the performative scores of collective bodies and voices.  The interdisciplinary program was inspired by the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp which was active from 1981 to 2000. It was established by women to protest nuclear weapons being sited near Reading at RAF Greenham Common.

Other participating artists, speakers, and writers:

Susan Gibb, Marco Godoy, Chto Delat/Dmitry Vilensky, Noam Inbar and Nir Shauloff, Jamila Johnson-Small/Last Yearz Interesting Negro and Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, Mikhail Karikis, Tali Keren, André Lepecki, Florian Malzacher, Public MovementMichal Oppenheim, Rory Pilgrim, Yvonne Rainer, Edgar Schmitz, Jack Tan, Nina Wakeford, Catherine Wood, Sara Wookey and Katarina Zdjelar.

54th Zagreb Salon of Visual Arts. “Without Anesthesia” exhibition

+ March 26th, opening at Home of HDLU (Zagreb, Croatia)

Curated by Branka Benčić and Tevž Logar.......”Considering the background and perspective of the Zagreb Salon the curatorial proposal is formed kaleidoscopically, as a reflection of multiple perspectives and positions. On the one hand, with a twenty-year break, we recall the City scapes (1998) Salon, curated by Igor Zabela, on which this exhibition leans, contemplating continuities and discontinuities, opportunities and perspectives, filled and unfulfilled potentials and aspirations, curatorial practices and institutional history of the exhibition”.......

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SYN-PERFORMANCE AT ALSERKAL AVENUE

Performance in collaboration with WYWY and a group of DXB skaters, on March 18th as part of the Open Studios at Alserkal Residency.

Starts at 6.30pm!

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Screening in Beijing, Dec 9th, as part of "Nine Days to See"

Organized by Bo Wang and conceived by Song Yi, Guo Jinhong & Kou Ta

Program: 
Clearing Agent (2015), Zeljka Blaksic aka Gita Blak
Dedicated to (2017), William Song
Senses of Time (2017), Wenhua Shi
Where It Flows Out Into Plains (2016), Hiroshi Sunairi
The Fall (2018), Edwin Lo
(better not) Set This Hat on Fire (2011), Heather Renée Russ
If I come back to this life, I’d like to be an American Dentist (2011), Manuel Molina Martagon
A Charming Summer in the Ice City (unfinished), Jacob Dreyer, Benny Shaffer & Bo Wang

Time: 
5pm - post midnight, Dec 9th, 2018.

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"SHAPING DESIRED FUTURES" book promotion at BOZAR

The book is published by Nero Books and BOZAR with essays by Alexandra Danilova, Paul Dujardin, Oriol Fontdevila, Boris Groys, Krzy Gutfranski, Suzannah Victoria Beatrice Henty, Vlad Morariu, Michal Novotný , Nina Power, Jan Sowa, Katalin Timar, Wato Tsereteli, Joanna Warsza, Peter Weibel and art projects by Željka Blakšić (Gita Blak), Vika Eksta, Vitalij Strigunkov and METASITU.

Additionally, there will be a whole day conference at BOZAR
Free entrance. From 9:30 to 18:30

https://www.bozar.be/en/activities/148831-shaping-desired-future

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Whisper – Talk – Sing – Scream, at Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf

D’EST: A Multi-Curatorial Online Platform for Video Art from the Former “East” and “West”

http://www.d-est.com/

Beginning in 2018, D’EST will be established as a contemporary video art platform that maps female and collective positions that reflect the post-socialist transformation along topical focuses. Online as well as at different cinemas, festivals and art institutions, D’EST opens up artistic approaches to geographic, horizontal and gender critical historiographies.

WHISPER – TALK – SING – SCREAM will be presented as part of a screening chapter of the D'EST online platform for video art, PERFORMING WORDS, UTTERING PERFORMANCE, curated by Inga Lace, Anna Bitkina  and Maria Veits. In collaboration with Kunstverein für die Rheinlande, Westfalen Duesseldorf and Filmwerkstatt Duesseldorf on the June 30th at Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf.

Participating artists: Željka Blakšić aka Gita Blak, Katrina Neiburga, Katarina Zdjelar, Gluklya (Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya), Cooperative Shvemy, Emilija Škarnulytė, Polina Kanis, CORO Collective (Eglė Budvytytė, Goda Budvytytė, Ieva Misevičiūtė) and Ira Eduardovna

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