The launch event of the North Macedonian iteration of the project “Future Ecologies”, originally developed by the British Council and LUX, is organised by Ana Frangovska, senior curator at the National Gallery of North Macedonia,as a webinar entitled “An Ecology of Thought”.
The webinar will be led by artists and curators from the local visual art scene and will address different ecological issues. Human processes greatly influence the environment and are leading to rapidly changing living conditions: polluted air, soil, seas, melting ice, fires, floods, destroyed ecosystems, migrations, famine and pandemics. How are these conditions reflected or translated into a visual language? And how can this language be used as a powerful tool for raising the awareness?
The Launch Event of the project “Future Ecologies” by the British Council and Lux Collection in collaboration with the National Gallery is the webinar entitled “An Ecology of Thought”, which will be led by prolific artists and curators from the local visual art scene and they will address different ecological and political issues, whose processes are greatly influenced by the way man behaves, exploits and destroys nature, are rapidly changing living conditions: polluted air, soil, seas, melting ice, fires, floods, destroyed ecosystems, migrations, famine, pandemics ...and finally, how and does it reflects or translates with visual language, as a powerful tool for raising the awareness.
The webinar will discuss numerous ecological and political concerns. It will bring together incisive views on topics such as the environment, climate change, colonization and extractive industries, global markets, migration, identity and making beauty out of the ugly.
The webinar will reflect on the conclusion of the 2012 book “Toward Global (Environ)Mental Change - Transformative Art and Cultures of Sustainability”, which looks at theoretical approaches in the field of Ecological arts. and defined the global crisis of unsustainability as a disruption of the hardware of civilization, as well as a crisis of the software of the human mind.
Guest speakers
Nebojsa Vilic, art curator, art theoretician and art history professor at the Faculty of Arts, Art history and Drama Faculty in Skopje - His professional interest varies from art criticism (over 100 published texts), through theory of art, to the theoretical interpretations of digital arts. He has curated over 30 exhibitions in Macedonia and abroad.
Ivana Vaseva, art critic, NGO - is a curator and researcher of cross-disciplinary, collaborative and socially engaged works and programs. She is program director of the organization “Faculty of things that can’t be learned (FR~U)” and is co-curator of the AKTO Festival for contemporary arts, existing since 2006. She has curated several exhibitions and programs both in the country and abroad and was an editor of several publications.
Kristina Pulejkova, a London-based artist whose inter-disciplinary practice is informed by science and technology. Kristina’s works have been exhibited/screened at the National Gallery of Macedonia, Museum for Contemporary Art, Skopje, MK (solo show); MAK, Vienna, AT; Project Space Kunsthalle, Vienna, AT; Het Glaspaviljoen, Eindhoven, NL; The Science Museum, London, UK; The V&A, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK and the Art Licks Festival, London UK, amongst others.
OPA (Obsessive Possessive Aggression), artistic group, Slobodanka Stevceska professor at the Faculty of Art in Skopje and Denis Sarakinoski, free-lance artist based in Skopje - Members: Slobodanka Stevceska & Denis Saraginovski. OPA was created in 2001 in Skopje, Macedonia by Denis Saraginovski (born 1971 in Skopje, studied at The Faculty of Fine Arts, Skopje; visual artist and freelance videographer) and Slobodanka Stevčeska (born 1971 in Skopje, MFA, Faculty of Fine Arts, Skopje; visual artist and art pedagogue; currently teaching at The Faculty of Fine Arts, Skopje). Since 2014 OPA has developed two new identities existing parallel to OPA: OPA Professional (established in 2014) and OPA Fondacija (established in 2016).
Velimir Zernovski, free-lance artist based in Skopje - BA and MA from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University - Skopje. He realized solo exhibitions in Macedonia and abroad; he took part in group exhibitions in Slovenia, Kosovo, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Macedonia, Turkey and USA. He curated and co-curated several projects and exhibitions and participated in many international projects and collaborations.
Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva (born 1971, Kavadarci, North Macedonia), free-lance artist based in UK - she has exhibited extensively and realized numerous commissions nationally and internationally, in gallery spaces, museums and within the public realm. Hadzi-Vasileva was selected by the Ministry of Culture to represent Macedonia at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, with Ana Frangovska, curator at the National Gallery of Macedonia. She graduated in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998.
Slavica Janešlieva, artist and professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje - is a visual artist with characteristic multimedia and inermedial expression. Janešlieva specialized in graphic art/printmaking, but she shows her recognizable artistic expression and talent for visual narration in various mediums: print, object, art installation, drawing, photography, video, book art etc. Her works are part of numerous juried and curated national and international exhibitions all over the world (27 solo exhibitions and over 250 group exhibition).
Moderator
Ana Frangovska, senior curator at the National Gallery of North Macedonia - A creative and dynamic art professional with twenty years curatorial, educational and research experience in the contemporary visual arts. She has worked as senior curator at the Macedonian National Gallery for the past fifteen years. She has effective public relations and presentations skills, and ample experience in written communication, planning and conducting art marketing campaigns.
She is a member of the Institute for Arts and Culture “Ars Acta”, which she co founded in 2012. She runs an international residency in village of Galichnik, western Macedonia, that has been in existence for 31 years.
