“Some 45 years ago, an artist friend asked me if I thought that art could change the world. This naive question received an equally naive and angry answer. Today that same question would would provoke a diametrically different response but it would still be infused with anger. And yet, viewed in a social context, art remains a generous human act.

I make art as a way of conceptualizing the world around me. I am very well aware that, after childhood, the task of brainwashing otherwise sane adults into accepting the systemic normalization of state violence falls to our political leaders, and their mouthpieces, the media. Coming from a place where art was a necessity rather than a commodity, the making of art assumes a singular, selfish purpose — to keep my own head sane. 

Art is also a means of expressing my constant and passionate belief in the fundamental democratic assumption that all people should be treated as equals. (This has nothing to do with the Bible, Koran, Tora, Buddhism, Marxism or magic mushrooms.)

To this day art seems to me the only viable way to attempt to deconstruct our daily consent to bearable normalcy. Once one realizes the meaninglessnesses of one’s own environment then the only way to go forward is to start learning to live with that fact. And just when you think you’ve cracked it, you have to start learning all over again.

For me, art has always been a clear modus of existence as a human being.” — Rajko Radovanovic

Rajko Radovanovic (b. 1954, Yugoslavia)

BA (Hons) Fine Arts from the University of Brighton, UK

Has exhibited in over 100 exhibitions in Europe and the USA. Has lived, and worked, in Zagreb, Brighton, Manchester, London and Istria. Currently doing the same in New Orleans.

Can’t stand false patriotism or artistic hairsplitting.