Sonja Jo
Sonja Jo, nuotrauka: G.Žaltauskaitė
Sonja Jo (b. 1992, Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia) is based in Novi Sad, Serbia, and works in sculpture and installation. In 2018she graduated in MA Sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. Her works focus on the impact of visual culture in everyday communication, ranging from childhood games, TV commercials to the five-pointed red star. She traces the transformation of these everyday symbols, questioning the two irreconcilable concepts of living, past ideologies and contemporary life.Thus the game of hopscotch is presented as binary code for the generation who use the Internet since a young age and are comfortable with new technologies and social media (Digital childhood, 2015); the TV coffee commercial becomes a B movie, low-budget commercial film, poster and points to a widespread cultural hegemony (Coffee time, 2017); and the red star is imprinted with double-meaning of the cultural heritage of ex-Yugoslavia states and the remnants of the Communist era (Mommy it’s broken, 2016). The ambivalent nature of the past and present and the transformations of meaning in different ideological conditions are recurrent themes in the artist’s works.
Sonja has been actively exhibiting since 2012, including solo exhibitions at SULUV and KCLab (Novi Sad, Serbia), Cultural Center of Vrbas (Vrbas, Serbia), the Museum of Srem (Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia) and group exhibitions at Ostavinska galerija and the Museum of Applied Arts (Belgrade, Serbia), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (Novi Sad, Serbia) and Osten Biennial of Drawing (Skopje, Macedonia).
She was the prize-winner of Foundry Stanišić and Fine Art Academy in 2016.