Željka Aleksić
Das Kapital
Željka Aleksić's artistic practice is strongly intertwined with her personal situations and experiences. In her works, she explores how socioeconomic conditions affect the circumstances of artistic work and determine one’s prospects of becoming an artist.
Željka Aleksić, Das Kapital, 2017–2023. Courtesy of the artist.
The project Das Kapital (2017–2023) started with her enrolment in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Before becoming an art student, she already had ten years of experience working various jobs in Serbia. While her status changed, her ways of earning a living in Vienna stayed the same – during her student years, she had to take on several jobs, mostly as a saleswoman, waitress, kitchen assistant, cleaner or hairdresser. She documented all of these throughout her studies, not intending to use the gathered material for an artistic project at first, but to have evidence of her work for her employers and bureaucrats.
Das Kapital is an artist's book in the form of a diary. It includes selfies taken at her various jobs and official documents such as work permits, payslips, contracts and hours sheets. The last page of the book features the diploma she earned by finishing her studies at the academy, while the price of the book is determined by the sum of all the money she had to earn to sustain her education. The second part of the project is a series of selfies she had secretly taken during her working hours at different companies as proof of her work, which was in most cases undocumented and unregulated.
Das Kapital is an artist's book in the form of a diary. It includes selfies taken at her various jobs and official documents such as work permits, payslips, contracts and hours sheets. The last page of the book features the diploma she earned by finishing her studies at the academy, while the price of the book is determined by the sum of all the money she had to earn to sustain her education. The second part of the project is a series of selfies she had secretly taken during her working hours at different companies as proof of her work, which was in most cases undocumented and unregulated.
Željka Aleksić, Das Kapital, 2017–2023. Courtesy of the artist. 
Željka Aleksić, Das Kapital, 2017–2023. Courtesy of the artist.
The project is an intimate insight into the working conditions and what it takes to earn a living as an aspiring artist. By literally showing the viewer everything she had to undertake and all the bureaucratic processes she had to endure to finish her education, Željka Aleksić offers a glimpse into the reality of unregistered workers or students coming from the so-called developing countries. Das Kapital is thus shedding light on how difficult it can be to study art or focus exclusively on your studies for someone coming from a working-class background.
Željka Aleksić (1989) finished her master’s studies in Contextual Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She works in the mediums of painting, performance and performative sculpture, focusing on the impossibilities connected to insecure labour conditions. She participated in many solo and group exhibitions in Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, Knjaževac and Belgrade. In 2023, she received the Academy Prize for her thesis. In the same year, she was awarded the Recognition Prize of Kunsthalle Wien 2023 and was selected for the Academy Studio Program scholarship program in the Creative Cluster in Vienna. She is a finalist of the Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos Award 2023 in Serbia and a participant of the WHW Akademija 2024.
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