Dragana Žarevac.
Born on August 18th 1959 in Belgrade. Lives and works in Belgrade Graduated at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade in 1984.Member of ULUS(Artists’ Association of Serbia) since 1990.
Member of Maison des Artistes – Paris since 1992
She has received several grants for education in video art and for video production including the help from National Centre for visual Art, Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education in France, City of Paris, Open Society Fund, Goethe Institute, Roberto Cimetta Fund, ProHelvetia, Ministry of Culture and Information of Serbia and from Serbia Film Centre.
She has participated in the art residencies in the Centre for Art and Media Technology ZKM, Karlsruhe, in the International Centre for Video Art (CICV), Herimoncour, at the Festival ILeMOUVANTE, Sant’Antonino; in the Art colonies Mileševa, Ečka and in the residential programme Inter| Video| Action, Požega .
She composed music for the performances by Ilija Soškić and Radovan Kragulj, for the Zoran Petrović Piroćanac TV show and for all of her videos. She participated in over fifty group exhibitions and in several hundred video festivals in Europe and in USA. She is the author of numerous workshops and curatorial projects.
Dragana Žarevac’s work is in the collections of the Ministry of Culture France, TV SWR, Baden-Baden, City of Belgrade Museum, University libraries in Reims and Paris, Art Gallery Nadezda Petrović (Čačak), Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, National Museum Šabac, National Museum Kruševac, October Salon Collection (Belgrade) and other.
She has received the International Video Art Award, Centre for Art and Media Technology – ZKM, Karlsruhe in 1998, Golden Sphinx for opus at Video Medeja Festival, Novi Sad in 1999 and Art Gallery Nadežda Petrović Award at the 23rd Nadežda Petrović Memorial, Čačak in 2005.
WISE WATER / Mudra voda
2022
It is said that water is a miraculous element that changes states, washes out, cleanses, remembers. Water can be alive and holy. Ancient rituals use words to turn water into medicine. Science examines the influence of external factors on water, but there are still no measuring instruments to accurately determine changes in water under the influence of sound. The artist pronounces, in Serbian and Hungarian, the terms “woman”, “child”, “love”, “freedom”, “knowledge”, “light” and others in 18 water – containers, thus producing the “wise water”. The performance offers a process of cognition through art by asking whether water will change after a certain word is uttered in it. The audience can measure the acidity of water with a litmus test and think about the gap between what science has not yet determined and the intuitive discernment, the belief. Dragana Žarevac tries to initiate the audience to ponder and analyze the distance between exact and accepted scientific knowledge and the knowledge that a person intuitively acquires.