Interview with Irena Knezevic

Irena Knezevic (born Serbia, 1982) is an artist who works in various media, including prints, ceramics, sculpture, video, music, and architecture. Her work often addresses issues related to the political and cultural history of her native Serbia. She was a student organizer who helped organize protests against Slobodan Milosevic’s government before moving to Chicago in 2000, where she studied at Columbia College, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago (MFA, 2007). Knezevic is currently an assistant professor at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and researches at the Kemper Art Museum. Upcoming projects will be exhibited at New Projects, Chicago; Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; and Kunstraum München, Germany.

This interview was conducted on December 15, 2012 on the occasion of her recent exhibition Night of the World: Flat works, multiples and music programs, at Alderman Exhibitions, Chicago, November 16, 2012-February 9, 2013 (www.aldermanexhibitions.com). For information on the artist’s past exhibitions and selected projects, visit: http://allyouknowistrue.net/.

Susan Snodgrass

Susan Snodgrass is a Chicago-based critic and coeditor of ARTMargins Online. Much of her writing is devoted to alternative models of critical practice and artmaking, whether exploring new genres of public art or contemporary art in former Eastern Europe. She is a 2018 recipient of a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her blog, In/Site: Reflections on the Art of Place, which explores art, architecture and urbanism, and a finalist for the 2019 Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Arts Journalist Award. She has written for both print and online publications for over 30 years, most notably for Art in America for which she was a Corresponding Editor, as well as Artforum, Textile: Cloth and Culture and THE SEEN. Her book Inside the Matrix: The Radical Designs of Ken Isaacs was published by Half Letter Press in 2019.