Projected Histories, installation view
's exhibit Projected Histories at The Frist is exceptional. She's an artist with local ties — she teaches photography at Vanderbilt — and her work is some of the most thoughtful and intelligent contemporary art we've seen, local or otherwise. We've written a
feature reviewon the show and picked a specific work as a
pick of the day. But Pavlovic deserves all the attention she gets, and this afternoon she's giving an
artist's talkat The Frist. We figured that was as good a time as any to post a recent interview I had with Pavlovic, where we talked about the exhibit, the difference between documentary and art, and how photography can sometimes show us more by what it leaves out.
Scene: The juxtaposition between your exhibit and Warhol Live works well. There seem to be a lot of parallels.
Vesna Pavlovic: People have made interesting comments about the relationship between the exhibits. I feel like I have a personal connection with Warhol, because in the ’90s I worked as a photographer for a music magazine in Belgrade, and I photographed a lot of concerts and authors and musicians and so on. The magazine was called Ritam, the Serbian word for “rhythm,” and I was assigned to photograph Nico. So it was nice to see photographs of her here, like I have this little personal connection to the Warhol exhibit.
People have noticed different things about the exhibit. They wander into my space, and think, “This is not Warhol!” But because of how things work as a display, people think that there is some connection. People notice a different type of spectacle going on: There's this loud spectacle with Warhol that has always been an aspect of his production — the idea of the spectacle and the audience — and with me there's more of a silent spectacle going on. Also in terms of how you look, you can relate them visually — if you stand in different spaces in the “Display/Desire” room, you can see reflections of the Warhol exhibit in the next room.
