Residency

Vanja Smiljanić

Artist
Video stills
Labyrinth Riders in (dis)remembering Atlantis, video, 19:38; HD; 2024 (video still)
Video stills
Labyrinth Riders in (dis)remembering Atlantis, video, 19:38; HD; 2024 (video still)
Video stills
Labyrinth Riders in (dis)remembering Atlantis, video, 19:38; HD; 2024 (video still)
Labyrinth Riders in (dis)remembering Atlantis, Lecture Performance, Drodesera Performance Festival Dro, 2022 photo ©Roberta Segata
NOVA. A feminist speculative LARP (Live Action Role Play) performance by Alicja Rogalska, Ana de Almeida & Vanja Smiljanić/ Radical Playgrounds, Berliner Festspiele, GropiusBau Berlin, 2024 photo © Ranav Adhikari
Symposium: Viral Hallucinations - Visual Ecologies of Conspiracy, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Lecture Performance 2024,  photo © Jewgeni Roppel

Vanja Smiljanić (Belgrade, Serbia 1986) is a visual and performance artist living and working between Lisbon and Cologne.

Smiljanić focuses on interdisciplinary projects, with research spanning cross-methods in visual arts, video, and performance. In her practice, she often uses the performance-lecture model to bridge fictitious and experiential universes, comprising technical apparatus, diagrams, and sci-fi povera sculptures. Connecting otherwise unparalleled reality systems, Vanja’s work attests to the foundation of ideologies as alienated regimes, recurring to her own body as a vessel for narration, often shifting between the position of oracle and storyteller.

She has exhibited her work at various festivals and institutions, including Berliner Festspiele – Gropius Bau Berlin, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, MAXXI Roma/L’Aquila, Kunsthalle Wien, Kunsthaus NRW, HMKV Dortmund, IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art Eupen, KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation Düsseldorf, Schauspiel Köln, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea Milano, among others.

The residency at AiR 351 will serve as a platform to expand Vanja’s ongoing research into the intersections of identity, nationalism, and body politics through the speculative lens of Atlantis within the Portuguese context. Drawing parallels between the myth of Atlantis and narratives of post-Yugoslav displacement, the project seeks to explore hybrid identities and cross-generational trauma. Using a multidisciplinary approach—including writing, sculpture, and video—the residency will create opportunities for participatory engagement and embodied criticality, amplifying silenced voices while addressing contemporary socio-political tensions.

Date
03.2025 – 04.2025