Sanja Iveković
Personal Cuts, 1982
colour video, MP4
d=3:4 min
MG-6840-e

The video work “Personal Cuts” by Sanja Iveković (1949) is the only work by this internationally re-nowned Croatian artist and feminist that had its premiere on public television. For years, that is, almost from the very beginning of her artistic activity, Sanja Iveković’s work has been referring to the medium of television, highlighting its role in shaping society and criticising gender stereotypes, the commercialisation of everyday life and the instrumentalization of politics. And just ten years before the dissolution of the country and its media apparatus – before it would again undergo politi-cal instrumentalization within the independent Croatian state – she was given the opportunity to present her new video work to the public through this very medium. The video depicts the artist with a black nylon stocking pulled over her head. At one point, the artist begins to gradually cut the stocking with scissors. Each cut reveals a portion of the artist’s face, and each unveiling of the face is accompanied by a short clip from the archive of the state television news program (in this case, it is a story about the formation and development of socialist Yugoslavia). Each section of the artist’s face freed from the pressure of the stocking is thus analogous to news from the realms of econo-my, politics, sports, or culture. The video concludes at the moment when the stocking no longer covers the artist’s face. This video has so far mostly been interpreted within the context of the re-lationship between the state and the individual, with a particular emphasis on the fact that socialist Yugoslavia was not a parliamentary democracy. From this perspective, the black nylon stocking rep-resents something akin to state ideology, which the artist slowly but successfully removes. Howev-er, what if this analogy is superficial? What if it is merely the first association that comes to mind? What if we pay attention to the “personal” aspect in the title of the artwork? In that case, the phrase “personal cuts” can signify a form of renunciation, a kind of traumatic detachment. And what if we notice that each cut, each act of freeing the face from the pressure of the stocking, is directly connected to a historical and social phenomenon? Doesn't the face then acquire its integri-ty and identity through its relationship with social events, rather than through liberation from them? In other words, there is no separate artistic persona that is independent of society. On the contrary, where society determines the artist the most, she is closest to herself.

Text: Klaudio Štefančić, senior curator of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb