Tanja Ostojić

Tanja Ostojić (born 1972 in Yugoslavia) is a Serbian feminist performance artist. She mostly resides in Belgrade.

The "EU Panties"

In late December 2005, Ostojić became known throughout Europe overnight as a result of the "EU Panties" poster, a satire of Gustave Courbet's "L'Origine du monde". Ostojić's version displayed her own crotch, photographed by David Rych, but clothed in blue underwear complete with EU stars. The image is meant as an ironic suggestion that foreign women are only welcome in Europe when they drop their underwear.

Along with other works, this poster was selected from an ongoing art exhibition to publicly promote Austria's presidency of the European Union. Vienna's "Kronen Zeitung" newspaper turned this into something of a scandal, expressing its outrage over state-funded pornography and its concern for Austria's world image. Anxious politicians of all parties quickly joined in, resulting in the poster being taken down. Since then the picture, which had already been shown several times without a title in 2005, has been informally known as the "EU Panties".

Earlier activities

Ostojić's grand theme is the "arrogance of the EU" with regards to the integration of south-eastern Europe into the union. For south-east Europeans, and particularly women, becoming resident in the EU is often only possible through marriage, which Ostojić sees as a form of prostitution. From 2000 to 2003, she publicly addressed this issue in an online performance artwork, "Looking for a husband with EU-passport", for which she didn't make herself look nice, but on the contrary appeared with a shaven head, like a prisoner from socialist times. This led to an actual marriage to an artist from Cologne, from whom she separated in 2005, again as an online performance piece.

At the Venice Biennale in 2001, she shadowed the independent curator and art historian Harald Szeemann - who had at his disposal a significant budget - for days, in the piece "I'll Be Your Angel", all the time simply smiling fondly at him. The one-time "great subversive" Szeemann did not see the funny side of this, however, and made sure she was ignored during all his projects.

Quotation

(Translated from the German Wikipedia article): "If the image of a woman's body can be seen as a political statement when it comes to the EU presidency, then what about the reality of south-eastern European women who in the year 2006 are still being sold as commodities in the EU? [http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,559184,00.jpgOver here] the fictitious woman lies in an apparently lascivious pose in the picture, and over there the real woman stands on the corner or is confined to a brothel. It is a paradoxical image."

External links

* [http://www.datum.at/0106/stories/1476531/ Career overview with pictures (in German)] in the "Datum" newspaper
* [http://www.kultur.at/howl/tanja/ot/set01/docu02.jpgPicture of Tanja Ostojić, on the left]
* [http://www.kultur.at/howl/tanja/ot/set01/kronecov3012.jpgPicture of the lead article of the "Kronen Zeitung", December 30, 2005]