Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

Irena Haiduk (b.1982, Belgrade) grew up in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia and lived through the war that tore her country apart. Now based in the US, her practice probes the intersections of economic infrastructures and aesthetic economies, asking how, in a world conditioned by crisis, we might desire differently. She believes that “To work in an artistic field rooted in making desires, to make art today, is to share the responsibility for what artistic economies maintain.”

In May, Haiduk transforms RAM into an immersive film set. The exhibition, Irena Haiduk: Nula, casts the museum’s lobby, second floor, and everyone who enters as actors in the artist’s debut feature film of the same name, Nula, which she will shoot throughout the exhibition. Set in 1990s Yugoslavia, the film captures a society unraveling after five decades of non-aligned Socialism, as civil war and international sanctions ignite a catastrophic freefall of value. During the hyperinflationary period of 1993-95, the Yugoslav currency soared to an unfathomable 313 billion percent inflation rate. Drawing from Haiduk’s own life, the film reimagines her family and friends as auto-fictional characters. The narrative follows three women – a National Bank illustrator, Anu; a statistician, Magi; and a teenager, Nula – as they transform into a forger, a prostitute, and bait.

Irena Haiduk: Nula is organized by X Zhu-Nowell, Executive Director and Chief Curator, with the support of Sam Shiyi Qian, Curator.