Group exhibition
October 2024
Mala Stanica, National Gallery of North Macedonia (MK)

Solo exhibition
November 2024
ECHORAUM, Vienna (AT)

Duo exhibition
May 2024
NADA Villa Warsaw (PL)

Solo exhibition
November 2023
RAVNIKAR, Ljubljana (SI)

My Familiar Unfamiliar, Edition 4
Duo exhibition with Maja Babič Košir
January 2024
RAVNIKAR, Ljubljana (SI)

My Familiar Unfamiliar, Edition 3
Duo exhibition with Maja Babič Košir
November 2023
RAVNIKAR, Ljubljana (SI)

Group exhibition
December 2023
ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana (SI)

My Familiar Unfamiliar, Edition 2
Duo exhibition with Maja Babič Košir
November 2023
Britta Rettberg, Munich (DE)

Solo exhibition
October 2022
PrivatePrint, Skopje (MK)

Artist’s book
October 2022
Published by PrivatPrint, Skopje (MK)

My Familiar Unfamiliar, Edition 3
Duo exhibition with Maja Babič Košir
May 2022
RAVNIKAR, Ljubljana (SI)

Art Rotterdam, New Art Section
Solo presentation
July 2021
Van Nelle Factory BV, Rotterdam (NL)

Solo exhibition  
May 2020 
RAVNIKAR, Ljubljana (SI)

Artist’s book 
September 2019 
Published by Look Back and Laugh, Ljubljana (SI)

Group exhibition 
March 2019 
Center of Contemporary Art, Celje (SI)

Group exhibition 
February 2017 
The International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC), Ljubljana (SI)

Duo presentation with Maja Babič Košir

NADA Villa Warsaw 
Villa Gawrońskich, Al. Ujazdowskie 23
Warsaw, Poland

16/05 — 19/05/2024

Curating and exhibition design: Piera Ravnikar
Organisation: RAVNIKAR Gallery
Photographer: Bartosz Gorka

NADA Villa Warsaw brought together a diverse selection of 44 international galleries and art spaces from 25 cities to present artists in a collaborative exhibition format, engaging the distinctive character of Villa Gawrońskich, a neo-baroque architectural landmark located in the heart of Warsaw. Organized with Michał Kaczyński (Raster), Marta Kołakowska (LETO Gallery), and Joanna Witek-Lipka (Warsaw Gallery Weekend), the initiative builds on Raster’s series of Villa Projects, an art fair alternative first initiated in Warsaw in 2006, with iterations held in Iceland, Japan, and Canada.

Over the course of several years of collaboration, artists Nevena Aleksovski and Maja Babič Košir have developed a distinctive artistic expression, which they build through multi-media and in situ spatial interventions. Their latest project, Letters from the South (2024), is an example of a visually rich narrative that interweaves aesthetically related creative practices into a unified wall installation combining drawing, collage, painting, ready-made and sculpture.

In combining diverse media, the artists treat the entire exhibition space as a blank canvas, on which they gradually layer associations and, in a reciprocal dialogue, layer fragments of stories that condition a more complex narrative. The dynamic and seemingly effortless collaging of the works is weighed down by individual and collective memories, commentaries and markers on the past and the present, which the artists share from their position of women, creators and migrants. Both are marked by the experience of emigration and the legacy of the former Yugoslavia, a place that has undergone a radical socio-political transformation in recent decades; the decline of the socialist system, the rise of neoliberalism, accompanied by economic and, last but not least, health crises, widespread insecurity and the radical digitalisation of life. In the context of constantly changing social circumstances, unstable politics and cultural dynamics, the artists today explore questions of belonging and a sense of familiarity in foreign and primary environments, addressing issues of origin and identity. The very motivation of the work and their understanding of their own roles have been fundamentally defined by references to women's struggles and women's positions past and present. In doing so, they adopt a highly engaged stance, aware of the vulnerability of the position paved by their predecessors for today's generation of women. The feminine and sensitive aesthetics that distinguish both artists, behind their apparent fragility, consequently reveal motives of emancipation and determination behind the artists' gestures.

The layering character of the installation, despite the intense interplay of two related aesthetics, allows the artists to maintain a certain degree of fragmentation and singularity, fusing their practices into an inseparable whole. They allow themselves the freedom of close coexistence of two visual expressions, which is the result of several years of exchange of creative processes, mutual understanding, trust and intimate immersion in personal archives and family stories, co-shaped by the socio-political realities of each time. The moment of sisterhood and solidarity developed through their co-creation imbues the work with an unconcealed optimism that inspires them with hope, the search for solutions and freer visions of the future.

                                                                                                                          Pia Miklič

Solo exhibition

RAVNIKAR 
Vošnjakova ulica 4
Ljubljana, Slovenia

23/11/2023 — 05/01/2024

Curator: Ilija Prokopiev
Photographer: Marijo Zupanov

In an era marked by profound uncertainties, encompassing pandemics, natural calamities, and harrowing wars, Nevena Aleksovski's exhibition Southern, Southern, emerges as an intuitive response—not to specific events, but to the inherent human tendency to erect boundaries, discriminate, and exclude. Through the latest works showcased at RAVNIKAR gallery, Nevena invites us into a unique experience, immersing us in the dark realm of learned and universally accepted stereotypical perspectives. Deeply embedded in societal consciousness, these ingrained views tend to resurface conspicuously with each global conflict, underscoring their pervasive nature.

My collaboration with Nevena Aleksovski began when I edited her book project titled "Melancholy of the Abandoned Lands," published by PrivatePrint in 2022, that tells the migration history of her family during Yugoslavia and after its dissolvement. Here she introduces us to the weight someone caries when being a migrant. Having this personal experience, her focal point of artistic exploration always originates from the concept of migration, a phenomenon that has shaped human history and societies. Whether voluntary or forced, migration provokes a negotiation process - a delicate dance between one's roots and the adopted environment. In general, Aleksovski's work captures the essence of this negotiation, unveiling the complexity of moderating one's heritage with the adopted culture, reflecting the interplay between past and present. The artist intricately tangles together visual elements to convey the dynamic tension between embracing new environments and retaining connections to one's origins. This uncomfortable place of being derives from the dissonance between familiarity and the unfamiliar, between a sense of belonging and alienation.

Therefore, migration is one of her most prominent themes, even in her latest production. However, the exhibition Southern, Southern is an extension of this concept towards topics addressing the struggles and prejudices faced by individuals considered 'Others' in a new environment, urging viewers to reflect on the human cost of exclusion and the significance of inclusivity in creating a more compassionate society. Or, more precisely, the confrontation and fight with stereotypes, an essential aspect of the migration experience.

Southern, Southern as a title carries an ironic message wrapped in an ambivalent undertone. Conceptualized as a sentence fragment, Southern, Southern, suddenly looks like an exclamation said out loud. It might sound like excitement but also like persecution. When one knows Nevena's art, it is clear that the symbolism of the South within her works bridges the artist's personal experiences and the universal aspects of migration. However, in this exhibition, she addresses the geographical movement from one place to another and delves deeper into the idea of migration, not as a migrant experience but as an idea of those who have never had this experience. Since standing on this comfortable and privileged side of the world's migration history is where the migration history is invented and is happening.

Southern regions, often associated with warmth, vitality, and a distinct cultural identity, become a metaphorical setting of a place, not merely in terms of geographical coordinates, but a place of dehumanization of the people from these regions, reducing them to caricatures or narrow representations that don't reflect their true diversity and complexity. Therefore, these fetishizing and harmful imaginations, defined as mysteries, fantasies, and allures, become comfortable zones for someone's feelings of superiority, hatred, and xenophobia. Creating an image of the South as an exotic place defined by the paradisiacal landscapes and rich traditions, still, very present practices in Western and Northern cultures make a nicely shaped terrain that always makes it easier to slide back to stereotypes than to learn from the world experience. This fetish, often referring to regions like Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean region, including the Balkans where Nevena is from, involves romanticizing or sensationalizing these areas and their cultures. They become places of meeting the Other, which according to Edward Said, described in his iconic book Orientalism, are actually places of fear, shaped by histories, fables, and stereotypes. (Said, 2019) He defines Otherness as a judgment that comes from the experience of meeting the new as a version of a previously known thing, defining it as a category of experience that is not much a way of receiving new information as it is a method of controlling what seems to be a threat to some established view of things, as the response is always conservative and defensive. (Said, 2019)

Nevena’s new artworks exhibited in RAVNIKAR gallery, serve as a visual narrative confronting this paradisiacal representation of the South. As in the previous works, here, too, through her minimalist method of painting, she keeps the idea between the old and the new, the familiar and the unfamiliar, consistently generating dual imagery. Her paintings show simple images of palm trees, a necklace, or unidentified objects that might be geographical maps or torn clothes. Combining these elements, Nevena makes us walk through a burned landscape deeply harmed by a stereotypical view. Her artistic approach unravels the complexities of these preconceived notions, challenging viewers to confront the implications and consequences of such pervasive biases. In her paintings we see objects, like being omitted from a bigger narrative that we cannot see, however we are still determined to bring a conclusion, that pushes us into a stereotypical way of thinking, a method through which Nevena confirms the stereotypes, on purpose, as a strategy in her work. On the other side, in addition to the paintings, this exhibition comprises an installation consisting of leather fabrics collected in piles resembling islands or archipelagos that, in their form, have accumulated the absence of the people and dehumanized lands. All these symbols are becoming darkened, like burned by the sun, where we see only shadows of reality, and we cannot perceive it as anything else but terrible. Actually, it is an image of how the South has been taught by others, as described in Franco Cassano’s book Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean, as a place without dignity, where the lands’ end and the sea starts, a tourist's paradise, and a mafia nightmare. (Cassano, 2012)

In contemplating the exhibition, we are prompted to continuously discourse on the implications of these stereotypes, recognizing the urgency of dismantling the barriers they create. Southern, Southern becomes a compelling call to action, encouraging us to confront the unspoken biases rooted in our collective consciousness and foster a dialogue that transcends the boundaries of stereotypes, aiming for a more inclusive and empathetic global perspective. Additionally, through the multilayered exploration of migration, negotiations, symbols of mutual understanding, belonging, discomfort, territory, and Otherness, Nevena reminds us that art is not a place of fun but an uncomfortable place of existence, a place where artists are obliged to speak honestly so that viewers can face reality, a place where art can become an act of protest. 

                                                                                                                                   Ilija Prokopiev

Solo exhibition

RAVNIKAR 
Vošnjakova ulica 4
Ljubljana, Slovenia

12/05/2020 — 01/06/2020

Curator: Piera Ravnikar
Photographer: Jaka Babnik

Artist Nevena Aleksovski weaves expressive fragments of human bodies, vegetation and objects in a multi-sensory visual language. Within a minimalist, stripped-down artistic expression, she explores how to express as much as possible with as few means as possible, each element being a repository of strong emotions and different meanings. The reduction of elements is also a kind of personal rebellion against the information overload of the visual landscape and expresses the need for rest and contemplation. Through the lens of personal, intimate experiences, it reveals a view of social phenomena, and fills the intersection between the two worlds with humour, irony, melancholy, anxiety and alienation.

Exhibition And Then So Clear consists of drawings and paintings, mostly created between the four walls during the quarantine period. The artist's walk through the field of alienation in the time of isolation asks how to further alienate an already alienated person, the importance of touch and what to do without it, and how to touch someone despite the distance. The aesthetic answers consist of alternations and complements of abstract and figurative elements, sometimes joined by colour cut-outs. The simple, simplified images are often playful and humorous, sometimes giving us comfort, at other times acting as a form of rebellion and subversion. The artist balances the seriousness with a reflection on everyday paradoxes, absurdities and the relationships that are established in this context, such as admiring the awakening of nature in spring and the annoying allergy to pollen, enjoying a cigarette and feeling unwell immediately afterwards, the feeling of freedom in solitude and the anxiety of one's own loneliness. Through a stripped-down approach, she tells us a story that is never fully revealed, part of which is also an intervention on the wall and an authorial note that pats us on the shoulder with a comforting - take it easy.

                                                                                                                                Teja Kosi

Group exhibition

Multimedia Center “Mala Stanica”
(The National Gallery of North Macedonia)  
Jordan Mijalkov 18
Skopje, North Macedonia

24/10/2024 — 04/11/2024

Curator: Jana Stardelova
Photographer: Jelena Belikj

Through the series of works presented at this exhibition I am dealing with the particular connection of my family, especially my father, with the mining industry, specifically copper and gold mine in my hometown Bor (Serbia) – the main reason why my whole family has emigrated from North Macedonia to Serbia shortly after World War II. By using archival photos from the period of my father’s employment at the mining company, drawings on paper and found objects I aim to create intimate commentary on the issues of family history, complex web of relationships that have shaped my identity as well as the questions of the impact of resource extraction on both the environment and community.

Excerpt from the exhitibion text by the curator Jana Stardelova:

Who can decide to move and who is forced to stay? Or is it the other way around? As bell hooks writes in Belonging: A Culture of Place: “thinking about place, where we belong, is a constant subject for many of us”. This is particularly true for the artists in Here, but somewhere else,[1] whom I invited to explore the universal human experiences of mobility, movement and belonging through personal stories.

Taking a decentralised approach, the exhibition features the works of seven artists whose practices combine local and regional perspectives. The works of Nevena Aleksovski, Elena Čemerska and Ivana Mirčevska, Ana Čvorović, Andrea Knezović, Ilija Prokopiev and Lenka Đorojević weave together the dynamics of displacement, transnational identities, collectiveness and the ever-shifting belonging of those who traverse borders. Their works explore intimate cartographies of belonging – whether voluntary, forced or imagined, across time. Using eclectic artistic approaches and varied media, the artists took a cue from Aimee Carrillo Rowe’s notion of “differential belonging”,[2] a movement between dissimilar types of belonging that keeps us on our toes and prompts us to deal with the ways in which we are oppressed and privileged. They embarked on a search for belonging that instead of identity politics explores different forms of (co)existence with the intention of being transformed.

The artworks explore the complexities of feeling at home in more than one location. Transnational narratives echo throughout the works, sharing ideas of belonging that transcend borders and connect individuals to multiple spaces and communities. Rather than romanticising the notion of home, they study liminality and “finding a way to make space for our true selves”.[3] Inevitably, vulnerability is woven into personal stories: embracing oneself in the process of adapting to new environments is a journey of its own.

The diversity of diasporic cultures is visible in many of the artworks. Using different strategies, such as auto-ethnography,[4] psychogeography,[5] personal genealogies,[6] the works tell a story of universality that goes beyond the world of binaries. Nevena Aleksovski uses the past as a raw material, converting it into a source of exploration of critical thinking. The personal and the communal intersect in Aleksovski’s work, stories and practices of the past connect to create a more nuanced understanding of the artists’ as well as our shared history.