Skopje, 7 March 2024 (MIA) — Gallery MC in New York will host a book launch for Macedonian theorist and curator of visual art and culture Suzana Milevska's "Participatory Art: A Paradigm Shift from Objects to Subjects," a collection of fifteen essays about participatory art in South-Eastern and Central Europe, published by Kontrapunkt.

Cultural theorist and publisher Iskra Geshoska will give an introductory speech. A conversation will follow between the author, who is a visual culture theorist and curator from Skopje, and Zhivka Valiavicharska, who is an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, New York. Art historian Tijana Ana Spasovska will also speak about the book. Cultural and political theorist Artan Sadiku will moderate the event, which will end with an open Q&A session.

Milevska wrote and published the essays in English in various publications over the past fifteen years. The collection was also published in Macedonian, translated by Ana Dimishkovska, the state university's Institute of Philosophy dean and professor of Logic and Philosophy.

Milevska's theoretical and curatorial interests include postcolonial critique of hegemonic power regimes of representation, gender difference in visual culture, and feminist, participatory, and collaborative art practices. She was a Principal Investigator of the Horizon 2020 project TRACES, at Polytechnic University Milan, and in 2019, she curated its concluding exhibition Contentious Objects/Ashamed Subjects. In 2013, she was appointed the first Endowed Professor for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories at the Academy of Fine Art Vienna (2013 – 2015).

Milevska holds a Ph.D. in visual cultures from Goldsmiths College University of London. In 2004 she was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at Library of Congress in Washington D.C. She curated numerous international exhibitions and initiated the project Call the Witness–Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2010-2011).

The book was published within the project Peripheral Visions – towards a trans(l)national publishing culture. The publication was supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Creative Europe Program of the European Commission. mr/