Gender and Visa Regimes – Presentation of the Artist Tanja Ostojić

The first accompanying program of the exhibition “The Nineties: A Glossary of Migrations” on Saturday, with Maja Korać Sanderson, professor at the University of East London, UK, and the exhibition participant, artist Tanja Ostojić. The program will be moderated by the authors of the exhibition, Ana Panić and Simona Ognjanović.

On topics of gender and visa regimes, each participant will speak from the perspective of their own scientific or artistic work.

Professor Maja Korać Sanderson will talk about the coloniality of the glossary of migrations in 1990s and today, which constructs territorial boundaries as gedered, racial and class barriers of the so-called developed, democratic western world; and about the importance of understanding/perceiving refugees as social and political actors with particular historical, cultural, social and gender identities.

The motive for Tanja Ostojić’ presentation is the project “Looking for a Husband with an EU Passport”, which is part of the exhibition. The project began in August 2000 when Ostojić published an advertisement with the above title and exchanged more than 500 letters and e-mails with a number of interested parties around the world. After six months of correspondence with Clemens G. from Germany, she organized the first meeting with him in the form of a public performance on the lawn in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade; a month later they were married. After the expiry of a three-year residence permission, instead of gaining a permanent residence permission, she was granted only a two-year residence permit. After that, Clemens G. and Ostojić divorced, and during the opening of the exhibition “Integration Project Office” at the Gallery 35 in Berlin, in 2005, she organized a “Divorce Party”.

About the participants:

Tanja Ostojić is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and educator, who lives in Berlin. She uses a variety of media in her artistic practice, examining feminist issues, power relations, racism, economics, biopolitics… She acts in her performances, mainly from the position of female migrants. Works by Tanja Ostojić have been displayed in a number of solo and group exhibitions and festivals around the world, since 1994, and have also been parts of many museum collections.

Professor Maja Korać Sanderson is co-director of the postgraduate programme in Refugee Studies, and co-director of the Center for Social Justice and Change, of the Department of Social Sciences and Social Work, at the University of East London, UK.