prof. dr. art. Aleksandar Battista Ilić

He was born in 1965 in Zagreb. He is a multidisciplinary artist whose work, through a total work of art, connects performance, photography, film, education and urban interventions with community and ecology and interspecies justice. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1992, and in 2000 he spent his studies in Columbus (Ohio).
His work began in 1983 with the exploration of nature as well as empty spaces and the relationship of man to the crisis in the environment. He is considered one of the pioneers of community art. From 1990 to 1994, he led the EgoEast collective, which has been researching Croatian radical art since the 1950s.
In the mid-nineties, together with Ivana Keser and Tomislav Gotovac, he launched the ten-year project Weekend Art: Hallelujah the Hill (1995–2005) - walks on Medvednica turned into a long-term performance and an extensive photographic project about man, nature and the climate crisis. At the same time, they also performed live performances in the world's leading institutions, including a series of collective performances, non-verbal "Body film" essays.
In 2000, he founded the Zagreb Commune, and in 2001, with Ivana Keser (with Gotovac as a co-founder), he founded the association Community Art in Ilica 89. They operate through workshops, lectures, public discussions and interventions, establishing a Community Art School and a Permanent Public Forum with projects such as Persona non Grata and Normalization.
Since 2016, she has been collaborating with Ivana Nikolić Popović on the project Ilica: Q'ART, which revitalizes Ilica as a symbol of the neglected urban ecosystem through joint artistic actions (e.g. We Citizens Are the City), encouraging similar initiatives throughout Croatia.
During the pandemic, earthquake and flood in 2020, he placed Red Crosses on damaged buildings as a symbol of solidarity and care for the city. In 2021, he launched the concept of the exhibitions Social Processes on the Facades and Public Spaces of Ilica.
He has exhibited in modern art museums around the world — Barcelona, Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, Dublin, Kyoto, Lyon, New York, Stockholm and others. He is a co-founder of the New Media Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he teaches and has served as dean for several terms, advocating for the mission that the university must serve the  community.
His work has been written about by Kunstforum, Art Press, Flash Art and Art in America, and he is also mentioned in publications such as Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 and MoMA's Primary Documents.

In my artistic work and pedagogical work, which are significantly interconnected, I focus on artistic work in nature, community, new media and social practices,  as a multidisciplinary artist and researcher.
From my beginnings in 1983, in my works with nature, and later in a series of empty spaces, I began to rethink the relationships of people in the ecosystem of crisis. My work has never been focused exclusively on an object or image, but on gesture, community and process. I am interested in how art can activate the collective, process the pain points of society and nature, and become a total work of art that includes performance, photography, film, education and urban intervention as equal languages.
I work with interdisciplinary and process projects, performance, film, photography, new cultural and social practices, as well as  group projects and collectives.
With my  artistic work, I expand the perception from formal artistic relationships to the perception of relationships between people. Therefore, my performances are often small ordinary actions or going on a trip to the mountains with friends, where I document these gatherings and through subsequent performances in famous museum institutions around the world, I testify to the value of elementary human relationships like rituals.
An important element of my artistic work is focused on observing and learning about experience, personal feeling and the value that an artistic gesture has by testifying to that direct experience.
In my work, I do not distinguish between documentation and direct experience, and I do not document individual works, thus expressing my artistic attitude. To that extent, I choose performance and artistic actions as a form of direct relations between people, as a form of direct experience, reflecting on how much such an artistic gesture affects relations in society, between people, perceiving and pointing out the neuralgic points of society.
When I placed Red Crosses on the facades of wounded buildings in 2020, in the year of the pandemic, earthquake and flood, it was not a symbol but a call — for help, compassion, solidarity. Because, as I used to say: I am like a caveman, and the street is my cave.
I believe that art today must serve the community as much as independent research — this is a belief that I carry both as a professor, as an artist, and as a citizen of the city, which I try to understand, again and again, through gesture, walking and acting together.

2000 – 2026 - in progress, Project COMMUNITY ART

2016 - 2021 – Q'ART Project: Natural and Social Processes, Zagreb, collaborative art project in the community and public space, Zagreb

2020 - Installation of red crosses on damaged buildings in Ilica, Zagreb, art action, art installations on six buildings damaged in the earthquake

2013/2014 - AERODROM (Airport), animated film, co-author  of an international project and Swiss-Croatian co-production (Best Swiss Film Award 2015)

2001 - 2010 - project BODY FILM ESSAY, a series of multimedia cinema and theatre performances in several European institutions and museums (Kunsthalle Basel and Tanzquartier Vienna, Museum of Modern Art, Dublin)

1995 - 2005 - WEEKEND ART: Halleluiah the Hill, a ten-year project and performance on Medvednica Mountain near Zagreb

2001 – MARKING THE TERRITORY, group exhibition,  Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

1999 – AFTER THE WALL, group exhibition, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Hamburger Banhof; Berlin

Presented in the books:

2002, Primary Document : A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s, Museum of Modern Art

– MoMA, New York & MIT Press, Boston,
2020, Maja and Reuben Fowkes, Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (World of Art), Thames&Hudson