Friday, February 26, 2016
Zhanna Gladko - Inciting Force 2012 – 2016
08.03.2016- 19.03.2016
Opening- 08.03.2016, 17:00
Artist talk - 19.03.2016, 17:00
Georgian Literature Museum (Gia Chanturia St. 8)
 
The personal exhibition of Zhanna Gladko assembles key fragments of her project “Inciting Force.” It consists of a rather large artistic archive: a collection of different objects, a documentation of artistic actions, series of self-portraits, audio and video works, and also found objects. This exhibition is the first case when the artist combines all the parts of the project, which were shown separately in various places since 2012. Additionally, considering the local context of Georgia, Zhanna Gladko has extended her self-portrait series for this exhibition.
One of the main directions of the artistic research project “Inciting Force” is to think about female subjectivity in the patriarchal cultural system, wherein the instance of a father and a man represents the initial point of power distribution in economic, political and cultural affairs. In Belarus, like in other patriarchal societies, the freedom of choosing self-identification by a woman faces aggression, cliches and humiliating labels. Femininity as the other is an urgent topic.
 
Zhanna Gladko is a representative of young generation of Belarusian artists. Through different media she works on the topics that concern gender in the context of current feminist theory, among others. During 2002-2009 she studied at Belarusian State Academy of Arts.
She lives and works in Minsk (Belarus).
 
Through constructing ambivalent images, all of her works are aimed at rethinking/deconstructing large notions like gender politics and patriarchy, religion and culture, art system and society. Moreover, by researching topics from her personal experience, Zhanna Gladko simultaneously highlights the urgency of these topics. In order to criticize the patriarchal system in Belarus, she creates the series of self-portraits which give actuality to many painful topics or create personal collection of objects and documentation of actions. Through these Zhanna Gladko’s relationship and conflict with her father is being re-evaluated.
“Inciting Force” is her key work. Experts of “Kalektar” - the Platform for Researching Contemporary Art of Belarus, have nominated this work among the 40 most influential works within the last 50 years of art in Belarus.
 
Project is organized by GeoAIR with financial support of Womens' Fund in Georgia