'Love and Resistance by Ivana Popović' shows the of work one of Zagreb's most controversial contemporary artists, who sadly passed away at the end of 2016. Although famous for the controversy, she attained thanks to her public performances and fashion shows, many aren't aware that Popović was a noted academic sculptress and was active in a number of art disciplines. The exhibition aims to shine a light on them all with performance, theatre, costume, fashion design, sculpture, painting and product design all covered.
Born in 1968 in Gorski's Kotar, Ivana Popović attended the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb, before going on to graduate in sculpting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Playing with parody, irony and travesty she sometimes shockingly addressed body, convention and beauty expectations through costume design and was known for activism that criticised, mocked and questioned nationalism and other social phenomena.
As a fashion designer, she advocated sewing with natural materials. Unbothered by the local fashion scene and working alone, her retaliation towards fashion trends and consumption was best demonstrated in her series 'Fashion Victims and Confection Standard'. 15 years of the series started in 1993 with a fashion play on Ban Jelačić square in which participants lay on the street. Two years later her fashion parade 'Madonna, I'm pregnant!' caught the attention of MTV.
In visual arts, her work ranged from paintings, collages, drawing, sculptures and installations which focussed on depicting moments, emotions and stories. Humans were at the centre of her work, but Popović was also deeply inspired by nature. Having never followed social and cultural conventions, Popović's provocative interdisciplinary work is hard to categorize.