Ivana Ivkovic addresses the notion of intimacy in the exhibition Babylon the Great by exploring the male body as a central motif and a performative instrument that she, in various ways, orchestrates through scenes and in different relations within the exhibition space. The works presented at this exhibition are related to her project Lines, Rows, Columns (Dormitory), which was performed during the 56th October Salon in 2016.
She is using the segments of this installation through photographic documentation that serves as a starting point, i.e. a visual pretext for the creation of large-scale tapestries, which are placed on the gallery walls.
Scenes and visual fragments from the previously created installation with performative character are transferred into a woven image and complemented by text that additionally complicates the possible meanings of the artist’s gesture, simultaneously indicating the continuous self-reflection as a constituent element of her practice.
The culmination of Ivkovic’s examination into the persistent interest for the feeling of intimacy, which is performed by means of denuding the tangible (physical) body, and through it the concealed (emotional) state as well, occurs in the center of the exhibition’s architecture where the scenes from the tapestries are being embodied in the space, recreating the performative environment in which the bodies participate in an orchestrated event of a monumental structure with ephemeral consequences.

Courtesy of the artist and Laufer Eugster
Photocredit Boris Burić