Over kunstenaar Svetlana Jovanovic

Through a personal interpretation of serotypes, Svetlana Jovanovic ‘s photographic work studies idealized female portraits, questioning existing clichés and taboos in a high-fashion-like photographic style.

Organized around the issues of portraiture, portrayal, gender, eroticism, theatricality, seriality, and identity, her work references a range of sources: from popular magazines and MTV, to the photographic work of Loretta Lux, Erwin Olaf and David LaChapelle. In contrast to these, however, the reality in her photographs appears abstracted. What remains of reality in her portraits are only the melancholic expression and the names of the red-lipsticked young women. These realistic eleme...

Through a personal interpretation of serotypes, Svetlana Jovanovic ‘s photographic work studies idealized female portraits, questioning existing clichés and taboos in a high-fashion-like photographic style.

Organized around the issues of portraiture, portrayal, gender, eroticism, theatricality, seriality, and identity, her work references a range of sources: from popular magazines and MTV, to the photographic work of Loretta Lux, Erwin Olaf and David LaChapelle. In contrast to these, however, the reality in her photographs appears abstracted. What remains of reality in her portraits are only the melancholic expression and the names of the red-lipsticked young women. These realistic elements can be read as either adding to or weaking the myth of the innocent and submissive female. Through her practice of creating images that are at the same time easthetically pleasing and discomforting, Svetlana Jovanovic explores the ambiguities in the visual legacy of femininity.

(The artist was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1970, and holds an MA degree in psychology. She lives and works in The Hague, the Netherlands, where she also studied Photography at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK)).