Vanja Smiljanić

Vanja Smiljanić (Belgrade RS, 1986) is a visual and performance artist based between Cologne and Lisbon. Smiljanić focuses on interdisciplinary projects  integrating visual arts, video, and performance. She often uses a performance-lecture model bridging fiction and experience, with  technical instruments, consulting diagrams, and ‘sci-fi povera’ sculptures. Vanja’s work testifies how ideologies are born through  alienation, employing her body as a narrative vessel, shifting roles between oracle and storyteller.

Smiljanić completed her post-master studies at A.pass, Brussels (2015), received an MFA at the Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem (2012) and Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (2019), and is a graduate in Fine Arts from the Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa (2009). Her work was featured in festivals and institutions such as Deichtorhallen (Hamburg DE), MAXXI (Rome IT), Kunsthalle Wien (AT), Kunsthaus NRW (DE), HMKV (Dortmund DE), KAI10 Arthena Foundation (Düsseldorf DE), Schauspiel Köln (DE), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (DE), Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (Milan IT), and others.

Her proposal connects seven years of intensive research on the Salton Sea in the American Southwest (with collaborator Lukas Marxt) to hydrological sites in Vilnius and Cologne, using lullabies as a palliative ritual for climate catastrophe and ecological collapse.

Vanja Smiljanić, still image from ‘Labyrinth riders in disremembering Altantis’

Vanja Smiljanić’s is part of Mutual Empathies programme.

Mutual Empathies is a programme by Goethe-Institut, Rupert Centre for Art, Residencies, and Education, and the Academy of the Arts of the World. The 2024/25 edition is possible through the generous support of Goethe–Institut Vilnius. Rupert’s residency programmes are supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Tech Zity. The Academy of the Arts of the World is funded by the City of Cologne and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.