Snežana Perović

She was born in 1966 in Sarajevo. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo in the class of Professor Alija Kučukalić. She enrolled in postgraduate studies at the same Academy. She exhibited at several collective and independent exhibitions.

For her, sculpture represents a field of vivid dialogue, an almost caricatured representation of human characters and nature, events and customs in which we recognize a sharp sociological note and a strong critical spirit, especially when the works are viewed as a whole.

“I feel that I am primordially bound to clay. Even the Creator of the world, according to the Bible, made man from mud. I am also creating some new, beautiful worlds of my own.
About the My Street project: By creating sculptures of ordinary, small people, I examine the world around me and my love for it with the sculptural language. I am actually a great philanthropist, and everything I do, I do, I do out of love for people. And this “My Street” is not tied to a specific climate. It can be a street in Kikinda, or in New York, and it can be the very one in Sarajevo where I live, International Friendship Square… With sculptures of couples in love, workers, random passers-by, drunks sleeping on a park bench, children, old people, I try to I show them with all their faults and virtues from a warm angle, so that the observer does not blame them for being the way they are. There is much more beautiful than ugly in a person.
There is an old science of physiognomy, which infers the characteristics of people based on facial features, movements, build and posture. I use the knowledge of that science, as well as my personal experiences, and that’s how I come to my sculptures. What I do is in a way the democratization of art. Practically, I try to use simpler symbols, but in a way that does not reduce the artistic level of the sculpture, I say big things, the biggest thing is exactly that, in space, a small man. At a time when many, unfortunately, are destroying buildings and human souls, you are building a warm house that many people will move into. Children are playing in front of the house, old people are sitting, and through the openings in the wall we will be able to peek into its interior, into its intimacy… Man is curious by nature. So let’s make it possible for those who will look at my sculpture to enter someone’s intimacy. Maybe someone will be disappointed when they don’t see anything spectacular in the house. In the bedroom, two people are making love, in the bathroom, a guy is sitting on the toilet bowl, in the living room, another guy is twitching and infected by the television… So, in this house of mine in “My Street” live similar people as in yours. My street can be and is your street, just as yours is mine. A large light will hang above this sculpture. The light that shines on us all. In what I just said, we should look for the basic symbolism and message of this sculpture of mine.
Like a house, the large block is decorated with figures: one writes messages on the walls, another meditates, a woman spreads out the washed laundry, a painter paints a wall, a street woman waits for a customer, a window decorated with flowers… inside, a fat man eats casually in front of the television, a scientist buries his head in a load of books, someone addresses God, the woman is taking a shower in the bathroom. Everyone does something appropriate for the home – if they have one.”
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