A Home Anywhere: Works by Sara Debevec, Delia Prvacki, and Milenko Prvacki

Exhibition
May 11 – May 26, 2017
18th Street Arts Center | Atrium Gallery
Gallery hours: 11am-5pm, Monday-Friday

Exhibition Reception
May 13 | 5-8 PM

This exhibition ask three artists to respond to historical traumas they are assumed to share based on geographic proximity, or shared national heritage. For artists Delia and Milenko Prvački and Sara Debevec, the shared geography of the former Yugoslavia is a distant one, both physically and in time. Whether there is insight to be found in their proximity, there is likely to be comfort. In sculpture, works on paper, and video, these three artists make a home anywhere.

Artists Delia and Milenko Prvački emigrated to Singapore in 1992. Delia Iliesiu Prvački is a Romanian-born sculptor and ceramicist with numerous public commissions. From 1970 to 1975 she studied at Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest where she earned a Master Degree in Applied Arts/Ceramics. Exhibiting professionally since 1970, Delia’s body of work since the early 1980s has been focused on establishing a new vocabulary and significance for the sculptural medium generated by available technologies and endless modalities of expression in ceramics. She often experiments with mixed techniques, and is strongly influenced by her passion for other forms of arts and archaeology as well.

Born in 1951 in the former Yugoslavia, Milenko Prvački is a painter and sculptor, and Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore. He earned a Master of Fine Arts (Painting) at the Institute of Fine Arts, Bucharest, Romania. Known for large-scale abstract works including paintings made up of multiple panels, Prvački also maintains a prolific drawing practice. Works created during his 18th Street residency will be on display.

Sara Debevec is a Serbian born, Los Angeles based multimedia artist, writer, curator, and blogger.  Having spent her whole life in exile, Debevec’s performative practice explores themes of identity, migration belonging, gender and states of being, through animal archetypes. She holds a BA Sociology degree from Goldsmiths College London and an MSc in Urban Studies from University College London.

Debevec’s 20-minute super-8 video work, My Family Before Me, explores collective memory, family history, bereavement, belonging and cityscapes imbued with trauma through performance. Debevec narrates the film in a reflection on loss, belonging and bereavement superimposed over edits of Super-8 family footage captured from the 1960s through the 1980s in the former Yugoslavia. On selected evenings, Debevec will present a live spoken word performance.

Sara Debevec Artist Website & Instagram
More about Delia Prvački
More about Milenko Prvački

Top photo caption: Still from My Family Before Me video, Courtesy of the Artist Sara Debevec