b. 1949, Zagreb, Yugoslavia; lives and works Zagreb, Croatia

Sanja Iveković is a Croatian artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans video, performance, photography, and installation. Emerging in the late 1960s as part of the Nova Umjetnička Praksa (New Art Practice), she was a part of the generation that rejected academic formalism in favour of conceptual and socially engaged approaches. She has consistently examined the entanglements of gender, power, and ideology within both socialist and post-socialist contexts.

Iveković became the first artist in Yugoslavia to publicly identify as feminist, framing this position as an act of political dissent. Despite former Communist and Socialist countries achievements in gender equality, Iveković was a voice against the regime’s patriarchal and anti-bourgeois stance. Her early works, often employing photomontage and performance, subverted the conventions of mass media representation, exposing how gender roles and national identity are constructed and commodified. Throughout her career, Iveković has used her own image and personal experience as tools for critique, merging the private and political to interrogate systems of visibility and control. In addition to her artistic production, she has been involved in feminist activism and education, co-founding the Elektra Women’s Art Centre and the Centre for Women’s Studies in Zagreb, where she has taught since 1994.

Her work, widely exhibited internationally, continues to challenge dominant narratives of history and representation, positioning art as a space of resistance, solidarity, and transformative critique.

Sanja Iveković’s recent solo exhibitions include Works of Heart (1974–2025), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2025); Sweet Violence, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2024); Pythagoras, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2023); Women's House (Sunglasses), Tate Modern, London (2023); Urgent Matters, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2022); Triangle, State of Concept, Athens (2022); Shadow Report, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2021); Lady Rosa of Luxembourg, Mudam Luxembourg (2020); Documenta 14: Works 1975–2017, Fridericianum, Kassel (2017); Unknown Heroine, DAAD Gallery, Berlin (2016); Practice Makes a Master, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana (2015); and Gender Check, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2014). Recent group exhibitions include The Time Is Now, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2025); Disobedience Archive, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2024); No Feeling Is Final: The Skopje Solidarity Collection, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2023); All That We Have in Common, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (2022); Not Yet Written Stories: Women Artists’ Archives Online, Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź (2021); Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond, LACMA, Los Angeles (2021); The Everywhere Studio, ICA Miami (2020); Promises of the Past, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019); Gender in Art, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018) and Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in Eastern European Art, MUMOK, Vienna (2010).

For further information about this artist please click here

For Sanja Iveković's entry on Asia Art Archive's website please click here