Jelena Jureša – Don’t Take It Personally : We’re at War, 2026

Two movements trace the perpetuation in Don’t Take It Personally. The first turns to European museum collections, examining Dutch Golden Age painting (17th century), where images of prosperity become inseparable from the histories of trade, extraction and colonial violence that cultural institutions have helped sustain. Here, close looking becomes a forensic practice, revisiting familiar images in search of what they conceal. The second movement brings together Dutch-Indonesian tap dancer Marije Nie with Croatian musicians Alen and Nenad Sinkauz in a filmed performance where rhythm, breath and speech become acts of resistance. Drawing on the writings of Dubravka Ugrešić, whose opposition to nationalist violence forced her into exile during the Yugoslav Wars, Jureša’s work examines how violence circulates through language, memory and the institutions that preserve history.

The psychological and historical dimensions of political violence lie at the core of Jelena Jureša’s work. Through video and installation, she constructs narratives that reveal how identities are formed, obscured and sustained. Her practice interrogates mechanisms of denial as well as the persistence of unresolved histories, highlighting the entanglement of nationalism, racism, colonialism and capitalism within European ideological constructions.