Jelena Janev

Jelena Janev (b. Belgrade, Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, 1972) is a sculptor.
She works in visual arts, primarily sculpture and art installation as well as in scene design.
She earned her BFA (1998) and MFA in sculpture (2004) from the Academy of Art in Novi Sad. In 2021 she became a Doctor of Fine Arts in Scene Design, in the Scene Design Program at the Department of Architecture and Urbanism, Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad. Her doctoral thesis was “Motherhood and gender stereotypes in art: a work of art in scene design”.
She has held ten solo shows, including performance art and scene miniatures, and contributed to more than thirty group shows in Serbia and internationally (USA, Germany, Bosnia, and Hercegovina). She has received the Annual Award for Sculpture from the Academy of Art (1997) and the award for sculpture from the Novi Sad October Salon (1997) for the sculptures “Portrait Helmet” and “Portrait Compass”. She was an invited participant in a number of international symposia on sculpture and art, among them the symposium on large format terra cotta sculpture Terra in Kikinda (2002) and the symposium on cast iron sculpture “Iron Tribe” in Las Vegas, New Mexico, USA (2007). Her 2003 sculptural installation “No Title – Floating in Space” has been acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina. Her large and medium format terra cotta sculptures are in the permanent collection of the Terra symposium. The group of sculptures “Dialogue” has been part of the art collection of the New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico (USA) since 2007.
Janev has published critical essays (with M. Stojšić) in Scena, the journal of theater arts, and presented work at international conferences.
As an art teacher, Janev has worked at the Elementary School “Žarko Zrenjanin” in Novi Sad (1997–1998) and as an adjunct professor of sculpture at the Academy of Art in Novi Sad (2000–2004). She has held art workshops for children and adults in Germany and Serbia. She has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animation in Engineering at the Faculty of Technical Sciences of the University of Novi Sad since 2012. Since 2016 she has been teaching courses on art in the Art and Design Program in the Department of Architecture and Urbanism.

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The works in the collection are characterized by:
Narration and figuration are in the foreground. The architectural nature of the work communicates the relationship between the inner and the outer, inviting the observer to circulate freely through it. Inspired by comics, she transforms the story through the form of shallow relief. The artist initiates a dialogue and re-examines her place in the world.

“The whole conceptual nature of this work, which creates a certain ambiance, is based on the problematization of the potential and layers of the entire system of relations between internal and external, between visual and tactile. This work is built into the exhibition through the reshaped space with its complete structure is not neutral, but is defined by the fact that it closes/opens with the observer, stopped on the surface, and those individual, gradual ones that take place in space. The observer participates in the way of a co-author, supplementing its meaning with factors of mental engagement and personal psychology. ” – Verica Nemet, curator, art historian on the monumental work of Jelena Janev “I think I can fly (probably just fall), I think I’m the best (I’m probably like everyone else) “from the Terra 2002 symposium.

http://www.ftn.uns.ac.rs/2048313340/jelena-janev

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jelena-janev-b26a9b25/?originalSubdomain=rs