Personal Statement
Sasha Zivkovic creates a world of bizarre corporate rituals in multiple mediums including photography, video and painting. Like an invisible CEO, the artist plunges a fictional workforce into an obstacle course of strange ceremonies and mysterious ordeals. In this brave new world, work is transformed into pure ritual. No papers are shuffled, no keyboards are tapped. The born-again workers operate in telepathic harmony and synchronicity. Work is a theatrical performance, a kind of neverending team build activity.
Inspired by his time working for a major corporation, Zivkovic proposes a playful yet incisive examination of the codes, rituals and customs that make up corporate culture and behaviour.
Joining a company is recast as “going native” - intiation into an alien tribe, a secret society, a religious sect. We watch the rites of passage and sacred ceremonies that bind these groups together.
With subtle humour, and a taste for the absurd, Zivkovic presents an antidote to the typical slick branding of work. Instead, we see a picturesque cocktail of ritual registers. Team meetings become pagan dances. Performance reviews become exorcisms. Powerpoint presentations become dark incantations. Like intrepid explorers, or earnest anthropologists, we try to decipher these mysterious spectacles.
Recent work has included a series of stained glass panels on light-boxes, inspired by contemporary illuminated advertising, but painted in the antique style of the Flemish old masters. Video works have involved public performances in busy business districts, such as the City of London. And photoshoots have taken over office buildings, with stylized, choreographed action transforming meeting rooms into sacred spaces.