![\"Predrag](\"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Predrag-Pedja-Djaković-1230x1053.jpg\")
“Perhaps the best way to understand us is simply to sit at the table with us”
\n\n\n\nArtReview sent a questionnaire to artists and curators exhibiting in and curating the various national pavilions of the 2026 Venice Biennale, the responses to which will be published daily in the leadup to and during the Venice Biennale, which runs from 9 May through 22 November.
\n\n\n\nPredrag Djaković is representing the Republic of Serbia; the pavilion is located in the Giardini della Biennale.
\n\n\n\nCelebrating Visions. Versace partners with ArtReview to share stories from the 2026 Venice Biennale.
\n\n\n\nArtReview Tell ArtReview what you plan to exhibit in Venice. What has influenced or inspired you?
\n\n\n\nPredrag Djaković My lifelong project – one that will likely never be finished – consists so far of some 40 largescale archival panels through which I construct, like a vast set of building blocks, a visual history of the twentieth century. On these panels I have assembled more than 17,000 original photographs and artifacts from over 80 countries, spanning the early decades of the past century to the present day. They include original newspapers from different periods of world history, carrying images of wars, revolutions, invasions, the creation of new states and meetings of world leaders. These fragments serve as the small tesserae of an immense mosaic, my visual chronicle of the twentieth century, my personal confession of a moment in human history that culminated in two world wars.
\n\n\n\nIn those wars my Serbian nation fought six liberation-defensive conflicts and lost 2,345,000 people – nearly a third of its population – just as many other nations endured devastating losses that shaped a century marked by destruction, flight and one defining experience: migration.
\n\n\n\nYou flee, you take a suitcase, a few family photographs and documents, and set out into the unknown. The installation is complemented with original suitcases, ship trunks, and pieces of luggage once carried by people who, if they were fortunate, managed to leave, save their lives, and find a new home. At its centre, there is a video work where I perform my piano composition which introduces a quiet temporal dimension: a meditation in minor key on loss, history, and continuation.
\n\n\n\nAR In what ways (if at all) does your work relate to the theme of the Biennale exhibition, In Minor Keys?
\n\n\n\nPD When I first encountered the work and personality of Koyo Kouoh, I realised how fundamental a role music played in her thinking. Her vision for the 2026 Biennale was clear: to reconnect art with its social role and to focus on ‘quiet tones, lower frequencies, murmurs, and the consolation of poetry’ rather than on ‘orchestral bombast.’ She sought to create an international event rooted in depth and in a diversity of voices, believing that music can bring a form of inner reconciliation after tragedy, and perhaps even a more joyful time.
\n\n\n\nHer expression ‘orchestral bombast’ fascinates me. It evokes those moments when people lose themselves, allowing violence, domination and destruction to shape history. Today the world once again sinks into madness. Values disappear and people disappear with them.
\n\n\n\nI composed and performed a jazz étude especially for the Biennale. The piece, titled Nocturne in A Minor, is presented within the installation as a video work. It distills my deepest inner visions of a world that turns in endless circles, where history refuses to rest and humanity repeatedly returns to the same turning points of its destiny. The composition moves between melancholy and meditation, echoing the fragile memory of a century marked by departures, migrations and unresolved histories. Through the language of jazz – improvisation, breath, rhythm and silence – the music reflects on repetition and the strange gravity that draws humanity back to its own past. Like a nocturne suspended in time, the piece opens a space where memory, loss and hope coexist.
\n\n\n\nAR Why is the Venice Biennale still important, if at all?
\n\n\n\nPD The importance of the Venice Biennale lies, first and foremost, in its endurance as well as in the remarkable vision of its leadership and curatorial teams. As one of the world’s last great cultural beacons, it constantly seeks to open doors to better communication, deeper understanding, and mutual inspiration. Through this ongoing effort, the Biennale reminds us how essential our differences truly are: the diversity of our cultural backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives from which we perceive the world. It is precisely this richness of difference that allows us to recognise one another, learn from one another, and imagine new ways of shaping a shared future.
\n\n\n\nAR What role does a national pavilion play at a time of increasing confrontational nationalisms? Is it about expressing difference or commonality?
\n\n\n\nPD Each pavilion is a space where cultures reveal their histories, sensitivities and perspectives on the world. In a sense, it resembles the preparation of a great meal: to create something truly exceptional, the right ingredients are needed. Only when these diverse elements come together can the result achieve the refinement of a Michelin-starred dish.
\n\n\n\nThis is precisely the magic of the national pavilions. Each one enriches the visitor, adding its own subtle flavour to the experience. Through encounters with different artistic languages and cultural backgrounds, we come to understand that difference is not a barrier but a source of inspiration, a way of expanding our perception of the world and of one another.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://backend.artreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Media_2LR94-1.jpg\")
AR Who, for you, is the most important artist (in any discipline) that your country has produced?
\n\n\n\nPD In painting, I greatly appreciate Sava Šumanović and Petar Lubarda, who both developed powerful and distinctive visual languages in the twentieth century. I am also very fond of Milena Pavlović-Barili, whose refined sensibility moved between painting, fashion illustration and design. She was notably among the early illustrators working with Vogue.
\n\n\n\nHowever, the great writer Miloš Crnjanski is probably the one figure whose work resonates with me most personally. His literary vision, with its profound sense of displacement, memory and longing, touches something essential about the cultural experience of our region. He writes in his masterpiece Seobe (Migrations, 1929): ‘An endless blue circle. Within it, a star. They departed, and nothing remained of them. Nothing… Departures and migrations made them murky and fleeting, like smoke after battles.’
\n\n\n\nCrnjanski’s vision speaks beyond one nation, exactly what I have tried to express through my work. It evokes those who are uprooted and wander through a world where the past dissolves into a ‘dreadful, murky abyss.’ Yet even within this darkness there remains a fragile light. The future still carries the possibility that suffering may be transformed into memory, art and ultimately into the quiet healing of the human soul.
\n\n\n\nAR What is something you want people to know about your nation that they might not know already?
\n\n\n\nPD My nation is deeply superstitious and profoundly spiritual. At times it may feel as though one has stepped into a film by Emir Kusturica or Sergei Parajanov: a surreal landscape of images, rituals and emotions that may seem unusual to an outside observer. Yet within this world lies one of the Serbian people’s greatest virtues: hospitality. Together with laughter and dance, it offers a key to understanding who we are. Through gatherings, music, shared meals and celebration, we express the warmth, resilience and emotional depth that shape our cultural identity. Perhaps the best way to understand us is simply to sit at the table with us.
\n\n\n\nAR Given that you are exhibiting in a national pavilion, is there something (a quality or an issue or attitude) that distinguishes the art of that nation from that of others? That makes it particular? Are there specific contexts that it responds to? Or do you think that art is a universal language that goes beyond social, political or geographic boundaries?
\n\n\n\nPD I believe that art always grows from a particular cultural and historical context, yet its meaning is never confined to that context alone. Serbian art offers a good example of this dynamic. The medieval frescoes in monasteries such as Studenica, Sopoćani, and Dečani are among the finest achievements of European art of their time, reminding us that artistic excellence has never belonged to a single centre.
\n\n\n\nAt the same time, Serbian culture developed at a crossroads of civilisations, between East and West, which created a strong sensitivity to memory, historical rupture and questions of identity.
\n\n\n\nYet art ultimately speaks a universal language. I often imagine the global artworld as a vast mosaic where each culture contributes a fragment shaped by its history and experience.
\n\n\n\nAR What, other than art, are you looking forward to seeing – or doing – while you are in Venice?
\n\n\n\nPD I have been to Venice too many times to keep count. My dear friend, the world-renowned artist Jagoda Buić, lived there in her palace. I visited her often for more than thirty years, finding peace, inspiration, a vast library, a piano and above all friendship.
\n\n\n\nThere is one ritual I never allow myself to miss: brunch at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. There I take a deep breath, say a quiet prayer, and – let me share a small secret – step for a moment into the world of Corto Maltese, the comic-book hero created by my beloved Hugo Pratt. In that spirit I wander through Venice, discovering hidden corners of the city, taking photographs and putting down thoughts or small sketches in a diary.
\n\n\n\nAR Could you give us a brief overview of your average working day while creating your presentation in Venice?
\n\n\n\nPD Preparation and the search for artefacts have always been an essential part of my work. Over the years I have driven more than 30,000 kilometers across Central Europe, visiting antique shops and flea markets in cities such as Belgrade, Prague, Rome, London, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Warsaw, Bratislava and Brno.
\n\n\n\nA day in the studio begins with a simple ritual: I play classical music. From that moment I enter another time and space and begin sorting thousands of artefacts, each connected to a particular place, moment or human story. Sometimes you discover an old photograph, perhaps a couple from 1903, and when you look at their faces it feels as if they briefly returned to life. In that moment creation becomes a kind of quiet resurrection.
\n\n\n\nAR Can art really change the world?
\n\n\n\nPD Art may not change the world directly, but it can change the way people feel, think and imagine the future, and that is where real change begins. Pain and suffering are universal human experiences, yet through art they can be transformed into something that carries light and hope.
\n\n\n\nFor me, music expresses this power most clearly. When I think about the ability of art to unite people, I often return to Miles Davis and his masterpiece Kind of Blue (1959). In that music one hears emotions that transcend nations and histories.
\n\n\n\nThe same spirit exists in jazz standards like Dizzy Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia (1942), where rhythm and melody connect distant cultural roots with the modern world. In such moments music becomes a bridge between past and future, between suffering and hope.
\n\n\n\nThat is why I believe art can change the world. It does so quietly, by reminding us that even in the darkest times there remains the possibility of beauty and renewal. In this sense, the Venice Biennale is a beacon, a place where art continues to illuminate the world. Even after Golgotha, humanity continues and art is one of the ways we find the strength to rise again.
\n\n\n\nThe 61st Venice Biennale runs 9 May through 22 November 2026
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