Artist

Ivona Pleskonja (1974)

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Return to Humanity

Author: Aleksandra Mirčić

Ivona Pleskonja is one of the artists who grew up in the 1999’s, affected by social and political crises,the loss of value systems, and identity crisis in her country. Developing their art, young artists of her generation tried to preserve the old foundations while getting hold of the new ones. They also wanted to create a new system of values which would replace the one that was disappearing before their very eyes. A number of artists of Ivona Pleskonja’s generation (Nikola Pešić, Biljana Đurđević, Dejan Kaluđerović, Goran Delić, Vesna Vesić, Goran Gagić and others) started out by searching for their own individuality in the world turned upside down before they moved on to create their own systems in which living would be possible. This explains why her generation is focused on exploring their own identity, observing the world through their private lives and experiences.


Blending the new with the old, mixing different systems of art and levels of meaning was not a choice here. It surfaced from the artists’ need to question the past before they could find a new direction in the troubled present; it was an existential question for them.


Contemplating her own identity, Ivona Pleskonja focused on the man, the individual, never renouncing the subject. A philanthropist, she opted for the portrait as the best way to express her feelings and attitudes.


The history of portrait is important for contemplation and understanding of Ivona’s work. She does not rely on the history of portraits of ordinary, anonymous people. Instead she uses images of leaders, politicians, and dictators modelled after gods and saints.

The impact of the socio-political atmosphere, in which Ivona Pleskonja grew up and studied, albeit invisible in her work at first is not irrelevant. The lack of purpose and helplessness that was felt by ordinary people during the 1990’s had a special effect on the young people. A young, energetic person filled with enthusiasm and desire to change the world around themselves, could not afford to sit down and do nothing. Such an individual could not take being thought of as a number or treated as a person without any significance. Even in developed countries young people experienced the same but in case of Ivona’s country, and its youth, the very existence was an issue. The artist, however, does not relate personally to the situation which she is caught in but talks about the feelings of an ordinary, young person. She talks about people who take control into their own hands, who do not surrender to their faith. This is a message that anybody, anywhere in the world, can understand.


Stories which Ivona Pleskonja tells start with her. Thus her first solo exhibition “The First Light” (1999), among other things, contai-ned a collage the size of her height and the width of her spread arms. The collage consisted of a great number of smaller collages. Its many messages, familiar and unfamiliar faces, appeared like an echo in search of itself. In places we could also spot the artist’s face, or faces from the world of popular culture and history, as well as militant motives, bullets and bombs providing a kind of frame for the collage. The collage, the artist’s self-portrait in fact, shows what she is made off. It also gives her answers to the situation that she, together with the people around her, has found herself in (the 1999 bombing of Serbia). Although very clearly present, Ivona Pleskonja’s portrait is not too prominent. It is hidden among other faces simply because the artist does not talk only about herself but every man individually and also because she still is not clear about her own identity. Looking carefully at the collage we notice signs which eventually become Pleskonja’s art, her mission, and which develop into a very clear relationship towards the man and life.


In continuous search of the way out of the chaos she has been forced to live in, she uses the artistic expression of a city a lot. Given that she grew up in New Belgrade, the most urban part of Belgrade, her choice was understandable and only too natural. She takes images from her works and turns them into hallmarks, patterns on concrete walls. She becomes the heroine “The Immortal” in search of her hero who will release her from the claws of the evil. This is a classic story, a fairy-tale or urban legend, still living in comic books and the streets of big cities. Ivona Pleskonja did not need to borrow stories from comic books or movies, but she did use their artistic elements. Stories were happening all around her, in real time. But, not knowing who the good and the bad guy were presented a bit of a problem. The artist, however, produced a clear picture, praising the young, urban man. Together with her friends, they became an army of new, strong heroes who will turn the world into a better place for living.


Oversized, simplified and stylized “Heroes” look straight at us, sternly and seriously. While being multiplied, they begin to resemble billboards as seen in political campaigns and various advertisements. Their expressive faces, although diverse, break down the system which the model was taken from. Ivona Pleskonja consciously plays with the familiar models of facial image representations, thus creating suspense and ambivalence. She wants the portraits of her friends to have real faces, names and surnames; she wants a personal rapport with them. She does not interfere with the person’s appearance and does not beautify it, which is something we cannot say about the faces that watch us from billboards and commercial advertisements.

Facial features are preserved in her drawings but are simplified, stylized. She abandons patterns and photographs. Working by hand allows her to leave personal mark on every man in her picture. Characters from comic books and popular culture, randomly noticeable, are substitutes for real people.


Working on portraits and selfportraits and analyzing and using models that she sees around her, Ivona Pleskonja changes the models and then fits them into a new system of values. Knowing how this artist works is essential for the understanding of her work. She rarely makes portraits of people she does not know. Her view of people is highly subjective, open, straightforward. She treats a model as a friend. What she portrays is not only people but her relationship with them, warm and compassionate. In the existing atmosphere of alienation and isolation, Ivona Pleskonja suggests a somewhat different rapport with the man. In her case it does not stem from art but her personal relationship with people, later transformed into work. She literary enters, and becomes part of, the lives of the people she portrays. But, she also invites them into her life.

This is Ivona Pleskonja’s portraits resemble icons and people in them look like patron saints.


The background here has a special meaning. It provides the solution to a puzzle, reveals the artist’s ultimate aims. Brightly coloured, carrying signs and symbols of life, the background creates an aura around the portrayed head. Going back to the old and stable system, offered by Christianity, is essential for Ivona Pleskonja and her art. There is nothing superficial or trendy about her going back to the very beginnings of Christianity where a person’s class, religion, colour of the skin and wealth did not matter. We believe that the society has changed for the better but differences between us do exist and are based on different standards. We use them to shape our opinions about other people and to decide whether we like them or not. In the world of art people are not segregated; they are all equal, they are all Heroes, protectors of the world in which they live. Ivona Pleskonja brings together the worlds of patron saints and comic book characters, and also different people incorruptible and highly moral. What she seeks in the man is his sensitivity towards the others and the lack of interest in the material goods. This is how the man with a mask (“Oxygen”), gasping for air in a polluted world, came into existence.


Ivona’s heroes always overcome hardship and win their life battles. The universal quality of the theme is noticeable in the very titles of her works. They do not always bear the models’ real names because the names do not matter in the final instance when the work has been finished. The names in the titles pertain to all people, every Ivan and every Goran; everybody can be seen in the “Young Flyer”, “Pianist” or “Nice day today”. Regardless of the artist’s use of urban and pop-culture vocabularies, the universal quality of her works actually stands to criticize the modern society. Her praise of every individual carries a simply message: be a man, fight your problems bravely, do not give in, become a hero. Thanks to Ivona sacral iconography is given back to the ordinary man and it is no longer reserved for special individuals who look down on us from positions of power. The artist still trusts people and herself.


The rapport that Ivona Pleskonja has with the man may appear naïve and childish but in fact it is deeply conscious and also subjective. Children love heroes, and adore them, but when they grow up they realize that heroes do not exist. However, Ivona convinces us that they do – we become heroes ourselves as we grow up. Ivona Pleskonja’s positive attitude towards the man is what best describes her as an artist.


In this out-of-time game between gods and people, primordial human fears come to the surface again. Ivona Pleskonja does not talk about everyday, topical problems which are easily overcome, nor does she address current issues which are but a mere speck of dust in the history of mankind. Each epoch has its own problems and this is no news. But in each epoch live people who deal with those problems. What each and every culture and civilization fears is that the world will come to an end. Ivona Pleskonja has a positive outlook in that respect; for her the fear is a symbol of the man’s victory because at the “End of Planet Earth” there stands a man who puts on a mask and carries on living (“Oxygen”).

She uses her own image, the image of a woman, a mother, to portray her personal fears. And the names that she takes from the Greek mythology are by no means a random choice. Ancient times are thought of as heroic and are believed to be the cradle of todays civilization. To us their character is universal. Avoiding actualization Ivona Pleskonja reminds us that some things have not changed, that the man has remained the same, that the woman also feels the same  like  Amazon woman, the Wife, restrained and confined. Continuing her search, and cleansing herself of modern civilization, she finally discovers “Nature”. It is no coincidence that we see nature in her image; the image of a woman both confined and liberated at the same time, like Persephone.


Ivona’s new series of pictures give us a new old world, the end and the beginning of her story. All of her characters have become one, powerful, prominent male figure. A picture, the size of a billboard, watches us from above like a god. Ivona Pleskonja’s chance meeting with a young Gipsy man, “The Road Sweeper”, discovered a whole new world for us; a world of happiness and satisfaction devoid of material possessions. “The King of the New World”, disinterested in the civilization behind his back, looks proudly and selfconsciously at the sky, while we look at him from underneath, from the ground. A young, strong Romany man (the word Romany in the Romany language means a handsome man) symbolizes the man’s final resurrection from his own dust. Ivona Pleskonja is here to remind us that the man was created by god from earth. But, what make the man a person are his life problems which is also what drags him back to that same earth. The man, however, always rises, brushes off the dust, and bravely casts a glance towards the sky.


Aleksandra Mirčić,

curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade

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