As part of the mentorship residency program Zajednički at GMK, in the 8ica space,
the duration of Rada Iva Sibila’s residency: 17.03.2025 – 09.05.2025.
Mentor: Sandra Sterle
Note: Smaller public presentation events will be organized and announced.
The lack of working space, financial resources, and time for focused creation are challenges young artists face as they begin their careers. On the other hand, contemporary gallery spaces today are more than just exhibition venues; they are also places for production, reflection, and collaboration. In response to these challenges, GMK launches the new Zajednički mentorship residency, dedicated to young artists. The program builds on the long-standing Otvoreno Studiopractice and offers a space for work, along with financial support, technical conditions, and mentorship from experts in the fields of theory or artistic practice, depending on the individual practices of the artists.
The pilot edition of the residency brings together three artists: Rada Iva Sibila, Kristijan Popović, and Mateo Nikola Tonković, who will develop their artistic research through a mentorship process. Their work will be presented to the public. The first resident artist is Rada Iva Sibila, who will stay in the 8ica space from 17.03.2025 to 09.05.2025, with mentorship support from Sandra Sterle.
Statement by the Artist:
Social positioning and the awareness of unexplored and/or suppressed memories through dreaming and transforming, based on ritual and somatic practices, are key concepts from which I branch my interests. I am curious about the boundaries and differences between personal fiction and reality – where do they collide, and where do they diverge from memories? What does it mean to lose touch with reality? How do delusions and hallucinations arise, where do they align with dreams and nightmares? Where is the boundary between experience and projection?
During the residency, I will explore perceptive cracks – spaces where personal truth collides with collective understanding of reality, and inner experiences take on forms that provoke discomfort, recognition, or empathy. Through my work, I question the relationship between the individual and the external world, on the border of subjective experience and objective reality, always between what is clear and what remains blurry, uncertain, and elusive.
The Dollhouse becomes a symbol of distorted memory, a place that is both familiar and deeply unsettling, a reconstruction of intimacy. Bathroom items – mirrors, razors, wet footprints – create a sense of intrusion, a sensation that we are entering a space we shouldn’t be in. It’s as if we are staring into an inner world that is falling apart and reassembling itself through fragments of memory, fiction, and dreams. When does a dream end and a hallucination begin? What does it mean to lose touch with reality, and what does it mean to regain it through the reconstruction of space? In an uncanny atmosphere that merges the real and artificial, the known and displaced, the moment when girlish tenderness collides with the unpredictability of growing up shifts from the safety of play to cracks in perception.
Rada Iva Sibila (born 2002, Zagreb) graduated in 2021 from the School of Applied Arts and Design and enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb the same year, at the Department of Animated Film and New Media. She completed her undergraduate studies in 2024 and is currently a first-year graduate student. Her artistic interests are primarily focused on contemporary visual and intermedial practices, with a particular fascination for feminist critique and esoteric/subconscious practices. One of her areas of interest is the body, questioning its physical and social conditioning.
She has exhibited at the Semester and Final Exhibitions at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (2021, 2022, 2024), at group exhibitions ALU Perspektiva at HDLU Zagreb (2024), Prostor u tranziciji at the Putolovac Gallery in Zagreb (2024), ALU/MET also at the Putolovac Gallery the same year. She exhibited at the Rupa Gallery (2024), participated in the project concluding with an exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum, Intimni prostori svakodnevice (2024) in Zagreb, and at the PlesAdu Festival the same year. She also had a solo exhibition in Dublin at the Pallas/Project Studio (2024) and at the ZEZ Festival in Zagreb (2024). She received the Rector’s Award for the project Opera Amfitrion, ALU (2023).
Sandra Sterle (born 1965) works in multimedia, video, photography, performance, and film. In her works, she explores docu-fictional narratives in various forms, interrogating the relationships between the personal and the public, the documentary and the fictional, shaping her work in the gap or overlap of these categories. She graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1989 and continued her studies at the Department of Film and Video at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf from 1995 to 1996 (in the class of Prof. Nan Hoover). She lived and worked in Amsterdam from 1990 to 2000, then spent a year on residencies in the United States.
She has exhibited and performed her works in numerous public spaces in domestic and international art institutions such as the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, Gate Foundation, Amsterdam; W139 Gallery, Amsterdam, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; IGNIS, Kulturzentrum Köln, MSU Zagreb, Gallery of Fine Arts, Split, Instytut Sztuki Wyspa, Gdańsk, Location1 Gallery, New York, Artist Space, New York, and more. She is employed as a full professor at the Department of Film and Video at the Academy of Arts in Split. She lives and works in Zagreb and Split.
The Zajednički residency is funded through the Special Public Call of the City of Zagreb for financing programs that include young artists, as well as through funds from the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The work of GMK is supported by the Kultura Nova Foundation and INA, d.d.
