Katalin Ladik

Katalin Ladik (b. 1942, Novi Sad) is a a key figure in Central and Eastern European art. Through her work she challenges gender roles and female archetypes, using her body and voice as both instrument and medium. She devotes her artistic work to concrete and visual poetry, performance, sound and sculpture.
Ladik’s birthplace Novi Sad, a city in the former Yugoslavia (now Serbia), has long been a conduit between the Balkans and parts of Central and Eastern Europe. The multilingual demographics of Novi Sad—being majority Serbian and Hungarian—shaped Ladik’s visual approach to language and poetry. Over the course of the 1960s, Ladik became an integral part of the Novi Sad literary and artistic avant-garde. Moreover, in her performances, Ladik engaged the folkloric and nationalistic discourses prevalent in that region with great irony and piercing critique.

Katalin Ladik
Poemim, 1978/2016
Photo: Imre Póth, Courtesy of the artist and acb Gallery