Vesna Bukovec

It is not what I expected*

On the artistic practice of Vesna Bukovec

Simona Žvanut

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A characteristic of Vesna Bukovec’s artistic practice is that the content always comes from her direct sociopolitical environment. Her first art works were marked by thoughts about her social and artistic identity through the (eternal) questions about the nature, role and purpose of art. With time, she redirected the field of interest towards a research of how the numerous and intertwined segments of consumer society shape our identity.

In many artistic projects we can thus follow an analysis of her complex mechanisms of activity, ever more finely installed into all the pores of our life; from the dictate of positive psychology, the pursuit of happiness and success, to the exaggerated obsession with one’s appearance and health. Among the most recognizable artistic projects we could mention the series of 37 drawings Positive Illusion (2009) or the series of seven drawings How to Fail Successfully (2011), everyone with a chronic lack of self-confidence and self-reliance will certainly find themselves in the series of eight triptychs I am aware of the possibility to be misunderstood (2011), which is also presented on the current exhibition.

In her work we can also find an obvious and more directly expressed criticism of the general apathy and passivity of the individual for engaged activity in contemporary society. Thus we can read the video work Personal Advice as a satire of putting the responsibility for one’s own behavior and fate completely on astrology. The series of five drawings I promise to change the world but only if 10 other people will do the same (2010) addresses the all-inclusive capitalistic package, which persuades, directs and satisfies our sense for charity. While we often encounter aggressive advertising in stores that tells we will be giving to a good cause when we purchase something, on the Internet, various initiatives daily call upon individuals towards socially conscious action. With the exception of rare projects that have had some kind of influence on the social and political reality (the artist mentions on her website the “Twitter Revolution” of 2009 in Iran), these projects usually remain on the “click to agree” level. By joining a certain group on social media and making a few clicks we satisfy our sense for engaged activity or even console our guilty conscience.

Irony, appropriation, repetition and eclecticism, which she occasionally trades for more direct statements, even appeals, are characteristic of Vesna Bukovec’s artistic strategy. In certain works in recent years, she has even relinquished multiple content meanings in order to reach communicative clarity and punch. In a series of eight black-and-white drawings with the common title At Whose Expense, she warns almost with agitation about the price that tortured animals and exploited workers pay for our everyday habits and pleasures. Some projects have also been dedicated to violence, to racial, sexual, religious and ideological intolerance and to the relationship between engagement and the automatic aestheticization in the field of art. Her work has especially been marked by the refugee crisis, populism, xenophobia and hate speech in the media as well as by the militant response of Slovenia, which treated the mass arrival of refugees as a threat to safety and not the humanitarian catastrophe for which it itself was partially responsible. Thus with her artistic activity as well as with her past participation in politically-active causes and various engaged collaborations, because of which she even stepped outside of the sphere of art, the artist always precisely, self-critically and sincerely reconsiders the possibilities that the individual has today (if at all) for actively and responsibly living in society.

*A citation taken form the series of drawings by Vesna Bukovec entitled I am aware of the possibility to be misunderstood

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Works mentioned in the text:

• series of drawings Positive Illusion
• series of drawings How to Fail Successfully
• series of drawings I am aware of the possibility to be misunderstood

video Personal Advice

• series of drawings I promise to change the world but only if 10 other people will do the same

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Featured text was written for the catalogue of the exhibition Alla Ricerca dell’Aura Perduta / In Search of a Lost Aura.