Suzana Milevska appointed for first Endowed Professorship for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories, October 2013 – July 2014

The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and ERSTE Foundation announce the appointment of Suzana Milevska as Endowed Professor for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria.

The Endowed Professorship was advertised by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in cooperation with ERSTE Foundation this spring for the first time. The Professorship was addressed to scientists with outstanding scientific qualifications in the field of Central and South Eastern European Art Histories, giving particular consideration to the period after 1960. In terms of an extended concept of Art History the Professorship position was designed to interrelate with other fields of Art History, particularly the critical reflection of economic, political, cultural and queer-feminist context as well as postcolonial theory formations and institutional critique.

The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna is proud to welcome a well-known and profound expert in the field of Central and South Eastern European Art:

Suzana Milevska is a visual culture theorist and curator. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths College in London. She taught art history and analysis of styles at the Accademia Italiana Skopje and she was its Dean. She was the Director of the Centre for Visual and Cultural Research at the Euro-Balkan Institute in Skopje (2006 - 2008).

Suzana Milevska was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar (2004) and P. Getty Curatorial Research Fellow (2001). Her academic researching and curating interests include postcolonial critique of hegemonic power in art, the complex relations between gender theory and feminism(s) in art practices, socially engaged and participatory projects.
Since 1992 she curated over 70 international exhibitions, mostly committed to searching for new curatorial formats and models of presenting critical curatorial discourses and socially and politically engaged art practices. She was a national curator for the Macedonian artists’ participation at the Istanbul Biennale (1995, 1997 and 1999) and for the exhibition Cosmopolis - Thessaloniki Biennale (2004). She was a member of the Advisory Board at the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto, Japan (2004/2005). In 2005, she curated the project ‘The Workers’ Club’ at the International Contemporary Art Biennial at the National Gallery in Prague. In 2008-2010 she curated the interdisciplinary curatorial project ‘The Renaming Machine’ that encompassed a series of exhibitions, discursive events, archives and a book. Her texts about the construction of national identity and gender difference in arts and visual culture of the Balkans have been included in many publications.
In 2012 she was awarded the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory by ERSTE Foundation.

Selected publications & contributions:
Gender Difference in the Balkans: Archives of representations of gender difference and agency in visual culture and contemporary art in the Balkans, Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2010;
The Renaming Machine: the Book, (Suzana Milevska, ed.) P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute, Ljubljana, 2010;
„Curating as an Agency of Cultural and Geopolitical Change“, in: Continuing Dialogues. A Tribute To Igor Zabel, Zurich: JRP|Ringier, 2008;
„The Hope and Potentiality of the Paradigm of Regional Identity“, in: Manifesta 7 Companion, Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2008;
New Feminism: worlds of feminism, queer and networking conditions, Vienna: Löcker Verlag, 2007;
„Resistance that Cannot be Recognised as Such" – an interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in: Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, London: Seagull Books, 2007;
„Is Balkan Art History Global", in: Is Art History Global? London: Routledge, 2007;
„Macedonian Art Stories", in: East Art Map. Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe, ed. IRWIN, London: Afterall, 2006;
„The Readymade and the Question of Fabrication of Objects and Subjects", in: Primary Documents - A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s. New York 2002