smisidora97@gmail.com
I S I D O R A S I M I Ć
Isidora Simić (1997, Belgrade) grew up in Lazarevac. She graduated in fashion design on Beogradska Politehnika in Belgrade, in 2020 with her thesis on the Influence of Architecture on Clothing Design. In 2019, she enrolled in the Faculty of Contemporary Arts in Belgrade, Department of Visual Arts, Painting section, under the guidance of Prof. Đorđe Stanojević, where she graduated in 2023. During her studies, she volunteered as a teaching assistant for Anatomical Drawing in the first year of undergraduate studies, and later became a teaching associate for Drawing and Painting in the third and fourth years of undergraduate studies. In June 2023, she founded the Venture Art Association, which focuses on projects in the field of art and culture. She participated in several artistic residencies in Serbia. She attended NLP seminars at the PCI Institute for a year. She is the author of the art book "Bis septem plus uno" as well as numerous graphic designs for logos, websites, and catalogs. She has exhibited her works in solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions in Belgrade and beyond. Currently, she lives and actively creates in Belgrade, and is employed as a lecturer at the ITS Higher School. Her approach in her work is multimedia, involving painting, digital art, video, performance, sculpture, and sound.
m u s c u l u s d i s c e r p t i o
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m u s c l e t e a r i n g
The series of works Muscle tearing can be understood as a personal confession, but also as a universal representation of human states and emotions. Sadness, pain, passion, joy are archetypal forms of sensations with which a person lives throughout their entire life. Through the examination of one's own body, primarily in movement, I come into contact with primal, genuine, and pure emotion, whether it be intense, rough, and aggressive, or gentle and sensitive. In the entirety and complexity of how we function as human beings, I seek the breaking point, the moment of weakness that is simultaneously human's greatest strength and beauty. Later, I transfer the discovered movements onto the canvas with a brush and occasionally with parts of the body, in order to infuse the emotion in all its fullness into the painting. The process itself flows uncompromisingly, allowing all aspects of one's being to come to the forefront.
The conflict between symmetry and asymmetry, rawness and control, raw movements and flowing streams of color, reflects the dichotomy of our inner world, which, in its entirety, constitutes human capacity to confront different aspects of life and find harmony within them, while tactile brush strokes and gentle touches add depth and dimension to the images, symbolizing the complexity of both emotions and human experiences that shape our physical and psychological nature.
The color red is deeply sought after and handmade, and as such, it becomes crucial as a metaphor for the intensity of human emotions and physical sensations. Throughout history, red has often been associated with passion, energy, and vitality, representing life itself, while simultaneously alluding to the challenges and struggles we face on a daily basis.
Isidora Simić
Latissimus dorsi I, II, III - oil on canvas, 150 x 100, 2023.
Saeptum I, II, Linea alba I - oil on canvas, 150 x 100, 2023.
Sartoris I, II, III - oil on canvas, 150 x 100, 2023.
Myocardium I, II - oil on canvas, 150 x 100, 2023.
Pectoralis I, II, III - oil on canvas, 150 x 100, 2023.
Musculus discerptio - video work, 18 minutes, 2023.
u l t r a c a r n e m
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b e y o n d t h e f l e s h
Observing Isidora's works, we don't feel like voyeurs; we feel like guests, welcomed onto the terrain to which we belong. Sometimes the scene is familiar, like déjà vu, sometimes it's nostalgia for places we haven't been, and sometimes it's grief for lives we haven't lived. The experience is undoubtedly universal. Drawing inspiration from personal history, Isidora Simić's art effortlessly becomes universally understandable. The themes that occupy her can broadly be classified under the exploration of corporeality, its demands, limits, and paradoxes. The artist questions what it means to inhabit a body, to keep it vital despite the challenges it faces, to resist its urges, and ultimately, to pay its impositions. Through her work, she strives to expose the narratives in which bodies are discursively embedded, tracing the trajectory of concrete matter through abstract, often contradictory contexts. She utilizes her own experiences, whether through the creation of symbolic monuments or directly, to tell stories as old as time but forgotten at first opportunity. In a world filled with people who experience validation only through absolute exposure, intimacy is a rare and expensive currency. With this series of works, Isidora Simić shows an unwavering readiness to violate the social contract through her nudity and vulnerability. She offers us an unadorned face in close-up, words of poetry born in moments of genuine personal suffering spoken through recordings of her body in an erased space, in a non-place. She presents her severed hair on a bloody pillow, her fears of life and oblivion in death masks. Engaging in an uncensored dialogue with her own self, the artist transforms a whole spectrum of powerful emotions into an elegant, condensed form that does not lose its value through aestheticization. On the contrary, she restores beauty to states marked as undesirable with a red letter. To be human means to suffer, to seek meaning in transience, to locate oneself in the chaos of a universe that does not hear our objections. We are victims and executioners, trapped in a closed cycle of guilt and the impossibility of repentance. We live in what can aptly be described as the Kali Yuga, and only Krishna had the fortune to be rid of his body. Ours, which killed God to take his place, awaits the eternity of Christian hell, the endless desert of the universe, or the final answer to what lies beyond the body.
Milica Grujić, art historian and curator
Larvis - sculptures, oil on fabric, glass, wire, R26 each 2022.
Corpus I - instalation, oil on fabric, metal, acrylic filling, 180 x 80, 2022.
Nox - instalation, oil on fabric, acrylic filling, 50 x 70, 2022.
Dies - instalation, oil on fabric, 50 x 70, 2022.
Capitibus - sculptures, oil on fabric, glass, 27 x 22, 16 x 11, 2022.
Duo - oil on canvas, 160 x 10, 2022.
Tres - dyptich, oil on canvas, 150 x 140, 2022.
Pupilla I, II - oil on canvas, 70 x 40, 2022.
Corpus II - instalation, hair and oil on fabric, 2022.
Absinthium - video work, 3 minutes, 2022.
Bustum - video work, 3 minutes, 2022.
Nulla post unum - video work, 1 minute, 2022.
c o r p o r i s p r e s s u r a
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b o d y p r e s s u r e
Blood pressure is a symbol of human vitality and inner fire. It also represents a measure of tension and stress. The process of applying color to paper is carried out without the use of a brush; instead, it is applied by pressing parts of the body, allowing the pure white surface to absorb the entirety of the emotion, whether it be strong, intense, and destructive, or sensitive and gentle. Through this method, the body leaves its individual trace, containing the most delicate emotions, feelings of pain, passion, and tension. The shades of red, characteristic as a symbol of liveliness, energy, and vitality, acquire a dimension that alludes to the life force flowing through the human being. These works represent an intimate expression of duality that lies at the heart of our existence - life and death, passion and pain, light and darkness. Within them, strength and vulnerability are concealed, simultaneously revealing the internal struggles that shape us as human beings.
Isidora Simić
Fortis, Inaequele, Infirma - aquarelle on paper, 32 x 35 each, 2023.
b o d y d r a w i n g s
When drawn, the body becomes a vulnerable canvas, revealing the rawness of human intimacy. Every curve, every contour tells a story of exposed emotions and stripped-down authenticity, capturing the essence of being bare, not only physically but also emotionally, as the strokes unveil the layers of vulnerability that hide beneath societal masks.
Isidora Simić
Education
2023. - BA in visual arts, Faculty of contemporary art, Belgrade
2020. - BA in fashion design, Belgrade Polytechinc, Belgrade
2016. - Lazarevac High School, majoring in natural mathematics, Lazarevac
Solo exhibitions
2021 - Animalia: Insecta - Gallery of the Faculty of Contemporary Arts - Belgrade, Serbia
2021 - Performance: I'm Listening to You - Museum of Saints - Belgrade, Serbia
2022 - Triptych - Modern gallery of the cultural center Gornji Milanovac - Gornji Milanovac, Serbia
2022 - Ultra Carnem - Cultural Center Dorćol - Belgrade, Serbia
2023 - Corporis pressura / Body pressure - University Library Art Center - Belgrade, Serbia
2024 - Musculus discerptio / Muscle tearing - Fsu Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia
Group exibitions
2022 - Start - University Library - Belgrade, Serbia
2022 - Exhibition of digital graphics, group exhibition, Maglian campus, Divcibare
2022 - Sound sculptures - Gallery of the Faculty of Contemporary Arts - Belgrade, Serbia
2022. - Digital Nomadism - Institute for the Study of Cultural Development - Belgrade, Serbia
2022 - Process - Silos - Belgrade, Serbia
2022 - December Art Salon - Lazarevac Modern Gallery - Lazarevac, Serbia
2023 - Start - University Library - Belgrade, Serbia
2023 - December Art Salon - Lazarevac Modern Gallery - Lazarevac, Serbia
Courses
2022. - NLP profesional , PCI Institute
Projects and collaborations
2022. - Video director and performer at Studio C47, Belgrade
2022 - Curation of the Comic Exhibition in Paris at the Center for the Study of Cultural Development, Belgrade
2019 - Associate at Belgrade Fashion week , Belgrade
2019 - Associate at BAF , Belgrade
Scholarships
2023 - Scholarship of Faculty of contemporary art - Belgrade, Serbia
Residences/colonies
2022 – Nature and art – Osečina, Srbija
2023 – Nature and art – Osečina, Srbija
Work
2021 - 2022 - Teaching demonstrator, Anatomy, Faculty of Contemporary Arts, Belgrade
2022 - 2023 - Associate at teaching at Faculty of contemporary Art, Belgrade
2023 - Lecturer at ITS, Belgrade