Introduction

The last two decades in Serbia are reason enough for this publication. The question is – why wasn’t this published earlier? There have been similar attempts to review a certain passing decade, but such a book, reviewing contemporary visual art in Serbia, to my knowledge, has not yet been published. One could say that in the last two decades Serbia went through two different phases: The war period (1991-1999) and the period of transition which is still at large.
Mirjana Peitler Selakov, the curator of Medienkunstlabor, KunstHaus in Graz, has written a text which deals with Serbian art in the 90’s, briefly looking back to the 70’s and 80’s. The passage reviewing the current state of visual art in Serbia (after year 2000) was written by Saša Janjić, the editor of Serbiart book. The third text was written by Nikola Šuica, professor of History of Contemporary Art at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. Mr. Šuica was examining certain poetics in the contemporary Serbian art which are not part of the local scenes main stream and as such are often neglected and forgotten.
We hope that the visual aspect of this book, the list of relevant cultural institutions in Serbia, and these three texts, will awaken the readers desire to continue to explore Serbian contemporary art. Only then would our goal be fulfilled.

Milan Bosnić
Publisher of SERBIART and initiator of IZLAZ (EXIT) project

It is rather difficult to give an overview of one country’s art scene, especially bearing in mind the limited space we had at our disposal. The aim of this publication is primarily to introduce broader international audiences to only one part of the overall achievements of contemporary Serbian artists. The artists presented in this book are, in the editor’s opinion, those who have been the most active in the past 7-8 years; and whose work, ideas and endeavors have been drawing attention of connoisseurs, making their names worthy of finding their place in this volume. I would like to thank all the artists who acted in response to our call and helped us create this publication. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Swiss Cultural Program Pro-Helvetia, the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade, and Mrs. Dragana Zeljkovic, whose cordial help made the project achievable in the first place. We hope that this is just the first step in the promotion of Serbian art scene and the first of numerous similar publications.

Saša Janjić
Editor of SERBIART book