Curated by Roxana Marcoci

A central figure in Eastern Europe’s long-overlooked history of astutely political Conceptual art, Sanja Iveković is finally getting her due with “Sweet Violence,” an exhibition of more than one hundred works spanning the Croatian artist’s career since 1974. For her photomontage series “Double Life,” 1975–76, Iveković matched photographs from her personal album with clichéd poses cut from women’s magazines, using mimicry as an incisive critical strategy (and notably predating Cindy Sherman’s 1977–80 “Untitled Film Stills”). Along with many other photomontage works and a number of early single-channel videos (such as the iconic Instructions No. 1, 1976, in which the artist defaces her own complexion, drawing and then smearing a diagram meant to chart a cosmetic facial massage), the show will gather principal examples of Iveković’s sculptures, drawings, performances, and media installations, tracing her pioneering practice up through more recent work concerning postsocialist society and the inequities that have belied the capitalist dream.

— Jessica Morgan