Vesna Jovanovic is a Chicago-based artist whose work negotiates common representations of the human body. She focuses on embodiment, posthumanism, biopolitics, and related bodily subjects, often incorporating humor and chance into her artwork.
Born in Chicago to working-class immigrant parents, Jovanovic spent most of her early childhood with disabilities from progressive JIA. Her family moved to a coastal resort town in Yugoslavia to mitigate the illness, which went into remission at age eight. During the Yugoslav wars, her family fled the country and returned to the USA, where she enrolled in a Chicago public high school and became fluent in English while adapting to the new culture. A first-generation college student, Jovanovic pursued a BA in Fine Arts (Ceramics) and later an additional BS degree in Chemistry, both at Loyola University Chicago. After graduation she worked in a research and development laboratory while attending The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received a BFA in Studio Art. She also holds an MFA in Photography from The Ohio State University.
Jovanovic is a recipient of an Individual Artist Program grant from the City of Chicago and many residency fellowships including The Studios at MASS MoCA; Santa Fe Art Institute; Ucross Foundation; VCCA France; and a long-term studio residency at the International Museum of Surgical Science. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Gordon Center for Integrative Science at the University of Chicago; Haggerty Art Gallery at the University of Dallas; Greymatter Gallery in Milwaukee; Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington; OSU Urban Arts Space in Columbus; OS Projects in Racine; Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; and Chashama Gallery in New York, among many other venues, and is included in permanent collections at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; International Museum of Surgical Science; and the Koehnline Museum of Art.