Vesna Pavlović

Born and raised in Serbia, Pavlović received her BFA in cinematography from the University of Belgrade and then went on to earn an MFA in visual art from Columbia University.  She is currently associate professor in the Department of Art at Vanderbilt University.  The movement from Belgrade to New York, and the combination of cinematography—especially the notion of the projected image—are themes that run through her art.  Much of her work mines history and personal experience to ask the viewer to consider both the utopian impulses and, at times, empty pageantry of sites of display.  Her masterful plotting of installation draws upon a cinematic sense of mise-en-scene in a way that encourages us to question photography’s perceived “truth.”  This consideration of the nature of the photographic image, or, in her words, “the photographic moment,” also allows her to explore related questions of memory and representation.