Svetlana Kana Radević - The Only Woman in the Crowd

This essay places the work of the architect Svetlana Kana Radević in the context of the ‘Yugoslav cultural space’, post-1968, drawing parallels between Kana’s focus on the social role of architecture and the socially and politically engaged practices of her contemporaries in the field of art. I introduce the New Art Practice generation of artists, whose central preoccupation was the social purpose of art within the Yugoslav system, as they challenged the dominant socialist modernist tropes foregrounded by Yugoslav own version of the modernist project. Using conceptual, Arte Povera and Pop strategies, through performance, street actions, text and the moving image, critically minded artists such as Braco Dimitrijević, Sanja Iveković, Mladen Stilinovic and many others sought to democratise art, through public actions, engagement of non-art audiences and passers-by, through questioning authorship and introducing non-traditional materials into their work. But like in architecture, in the visual arts the scene was heavily dominated by male artists and the essay interrogates gender discrepancies in the Yugoslav cultural sphere, asking how progressive and emancipatory these practices really were if they did not seek to challenge and disrupt the embedded sexism within the art establishment. Media representation of women did not help either. While in the 1960s and 1970s ushered a sexual revolution in Yugoslavia just like in the West, the proliferation of tabloids, adverts and films perpetuated the objectification and instrumentalization of women’s bodies all the while the authorities continued to proclaim their supposed equality with their male counterparts. Introducing these complexities into the picture of Yugoslavia during Kana’s early life and career, the essay seeks to highlight the challenges present in Yugoslav society and offer a nuanced account of the environment within which this unique architect was able to build an exceptional career.