The Nature of Sensibility is a solo retrospective exhibition by Biljana Gavranović, which seeks to present the artist’s rich and prolific oeuvre and illustrate fully the language of visual poetics she uses to express herself artistically.

The exhibition comprises several major series since Gavranović’s engagement with the Bell Art Group until today, namely, Hot Fields, Associative Landscapes, Totems, Skeins, Flies, Birds, as well as numerous sketches and drawings.

The Bell Art Group was formed in 1982; rather innovative and progressive for the contemporaneous arts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the group staged actions in public spaces that probed the role of art in society. The work of Biljana Gavranović, one of the group members, showed art in an unconventional way, which was very much a pioneering feat on the art scene of Bosnia and Herzegovina from today’s perspective.

In parallel with their collaborative projects, members of the Bell Art Group also had independent careers, which did not fully relate to what the group did. Gavranović’s independent career continued as marked by a style that has largely remained unchanged and recognisable to this day, with which she has stayed true to what has significantly characterised her work over several decades.

Biljana Gavranović’s oeuvre can be divided into several thematically distinct series, all of which have nature as their point of departure. Neither the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska nor the text by Maša Čavić, exhibition curator, are chronologically organised, which makes sense in light of the fact the artist’s works equally defy temporal or spatial arrangement, and are inextricably linked to her emotional, psychological and imaginary world.

Biljana Gavranović was born in Gornji Orlovci near Prijedor. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, Department of Painting, Prof. Milivoj Unković’s class, in 1982. She lives and works in Banja Luka, where she teaches as full professor at the Academy of Arts.