BARBORA ILIČ

Enter The Collective

Barbora Ilič and Kristýna Gajdošová

video and installation, 2025
Galerie Mladých. TIC Brno

Curated by Ivana Hrončeková

Through their road movie, Kristýna Gajdošová and Barbora Ilič explore the multirole identities they inhabit as agents within the art world. They don't claim to deliver moral messages or change the world; instead, they highlight the pitfalls of trying to navigate a field governed by unwritten ethical codes and the manipulation of trending buzzwords.

The installation Enter the Collective is a standalone “work in progress” segment of a forthcoming film, whose main characters represent four “archetypal” figures of the art scene: the burnt-out curator, the ambitious performer/artist, the activist DJ, and the fuckboy cameraman. Together, they set off toward an art festival in France, where a collaborative performance is set to take place. This storyline forms the film’s backbone—yet it is the surrounding reality, unfolding along the highways of Central Europe (or in our office), that reveals something just as crucial: a reality show capturing the collective’s internal dynamics, where the meta-ironic blend of directorial intent and improvised situation makes it unclear—even to the participants themselves—how serious the conflicts really are.

HorseChain

Cejla collective
video & installation, 2025
PAF gallery

 

HorseChain is a speculative scenario: what if part of the art world stopped pretending to resist market logic altogether? What if it leaned into its most aggressive tendencies, fully embraced late capitalist realism and scam culture, and took the reins—literally and metaphorically?
No more dreams of subversion. Just playing along, eyes wide open.

Maybe it wouldn’t even feel that different. Maybe it would just amplify the absurdities we already live—an accelerated caricature of the roles, rhythms, and contradictions we’ve learned to perform.

Dirt is a social construct

video & installation, 2024
45 000L gallery

 

What becomes a recognized pattern and what remains as surrounding noise? The video "Dirt is a social construct" deals with so-called street dirt and visual pollution in the stage of its physical decay. It explores the spontaneously emerging aesthetics of decomposing materials and their second life, set against a personal narrative about the concept of visual purity.

The phrase "apple of my eye" refers to something or someone that one cherishes above all others. Originally, the phrase was simply an idiom referring to the pupil of the eye. However, eyes actually do have their preferences. The Figure-ground organization is a type of perceptual grouping that is a vital necessity for recognizing objects through vision. In Gestalt psychology, it is understood as the perceptual decision in which the brain decides which item is the figure and which is a part of the ground in a visual scene.

But sometimes it is the background where the new system emerges, Sometimes, there is a messy beach under the solid pavement. And yet, the apple of your eye is the cherry on the pie. ∙

Cake by Jarmila Červená 

Where Them Stray Dogs At

Book (Eds. Barbora Ilič, Authors: Jiří Gruber, Barbora Ilič, Risto Ilič, Tamara Spalajković. Milica Živković)


 

The book Where Them Stray Dogs At (2024) introduces a collective of authors who approach Belgradeas a conceptual starting point. While grounded in one location, the book explores the broadermeanings and identities projected onto the so-called Balkans as a region. Through differentapproaches, the authors create a series of fragmented yet inevitably related commentaries onthemes such as authenticity, migration, urban transformation, and Balkanism. The subtitle of thebook hints at its transitory character, emphasizing the unaligned—almost stray—perspectives ofthe contributors. Reflecting on their own positionalities and the tensions between personal andcollective narratives, the book connects the authors’ approaches into a layered exploration ofthe liminal spaces between development and decline, past and present, belonging andalienation.

The book was published in 2024 in co-edition of FFA BUT and ArtMap. 

Barbara: The Weltschmerz Musical

video, 29 min, 2023
available on request

The short autofiction film focuses on the sadness of a fragile art monster – a foreigner named Barbara. After some time, Barbara returns to Belgrade, where she plans to visit her family and find inspiration for a new project. As she spends her days in a hotel room drowning in melancholy and visions of lost futures, her relative Sale keeps trying to contact her.

Through the concept of Yugonostalgia, the work explores the problematic discourse of identity decolonization, reparative turn in art, and the overall purpose of reflecting one's privilege. However, the subject of the film itself is not so much an analysis of these phenomena as a subtle effort to point out individual motivations and internal processes that accompany them. In other words, which of us is lucky enough to become a (self-made) romantic hero worth being looked at?