Željka Aleksić, *1989 in Knjaževac/Serbia, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the Department of Contextual Painting in 2023. She began her studies under the mentorship of Ashley Hans Scheirl while graduating with Despina Stokou.

With her graduation work Das Kapital (2017-2023), she explores the economic realities faced by a student at a prestigious academy. Her perspective is shaped by her background as a working-class individual from the so-called Third World and her previous work experience. The work raises the fundamental question: How much does it cost to become an artist?

Lately, Aleksić has been expressing herself through painting, performance, and performative sculpture, with a particular focus on the insecurity faced by working women in precarious work conditions Her work draws on various perspectives: subjective experiences, objective observations and mediated images from social networks. She often employs banal metaphors to reveal the paradoxical seriousness of both society and the individual. Her art reflects furthermore the lived experience of a woman in her third decade of life, navigating the advantages and challenges shaped by her physical journey – particularly in relation to beauty – and the socio-economic realities she faces. At its core, her work examines the weight of societal expectations and their profound impact on her personal identity and lived experience.

For her diploma, she was awarded the Prize of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and received a scholarship for the Academy Studio Program at Creative Cluster in 2023. That same year, she was honored with the Kunsthalle Wien Prize and was shortlisted for the Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos Award in Serbia. In 2024, she received the Startstipendium for Fine Arts by the BMKÖS.

@aleksiczeljka