Sanja Iveković

In the series Dvostruki život (Double Life), Ivekovič provides a poignant lens on the politics of media representations of the new Yugoslav woman. Each pair of images includes one of the artist during various periods of her life, from the 1960s and 1970s, and another that features models from women's lifestyle magazines from different countries, such as Anna Bella, Brigitte, Duga, Elle,and Marie Claire, advertising beauty products and new consumer commodities that claim to make a woman's life more pleasant and efficient. Public and private images are matched on the basis of similarities of gesture, situation, props, and location. In each of these works Ivekovič documented the ad's source and publication date and included a caption about the context of the personal photograph. The informal snapshots were culled from Ivekovič's family albums, and most predate those in the magazines with which they are paired, making it clear that the artist was not mimicking, aspiring to, or rehearsing the models' poses. Instead she reveals the uncanny resemblance by exploring her own life as a series of roles.