The Hollow Men project continues to “live”. It got its inevitable sequel, as it was perhaps expected, given that its creator is a unique, independent artist, a strong creative personality that always tries to go one step further. The sculptures of the said project, whose realization had required a significant amount of time, effort and love, were destroyed by Ivana in a public act of burning, which was at the same time a personal sacrifice. It was the self-destruction of the creator in the name of some other ideals, in the name of art that needs to connect and bring people together, so that the only choice that remained was to choose a way of doing this. The first impression of this act of devastation is a sense of shock – for what could be scarier than the destruction of one’s own works – but soon after the initial excitement we are confronted with the greatness of the act we have before us. It is no coincidence that Ivana, in the explanation of her work, refers to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which claims that with every new moment, something dies and something is born anew in us. This is precisely the case with Ivana, because these two acts of creation / destruction created a new work of art that she presents at the Venice Biennale. The urn with the remains of the figures is the only tangible reality of what has passed, and which has never really disappeared. The video works on the exhibitions The Hollow Men and the Burning of Sculptures, accompanied by Eliot’s verses remind us that nothing is irretrievably lost – art has proven once again to be like a phoenix reborn from the ashes. In these volatile times in which humanism is threatened, the only hope is that through art it will be possible to once again find the lost values that make the world worthy of Man. In this sense, Ivana’s work is an adequate response to the topic of the 57th Venice Biennale – Viva Arte Viva.

(an excerpt from the article of art historian, Ljiljana Zekovic for the catalogue of 57th Venice Biennale)