Current exhibitions in Belgrade worth visiting

Belgrade is the city where I grew up, the city where I create, and the one I share an unbreakable bond with. Lately, the cultural and artistic scene has been facing serious challenges—from the lack of space and financial support to global shifts that inevitably affect us as well. Despite it all, this city has an incredible ability to generate new creative energy.

I want to highlight a few current exhibitions that, through different media and perspectives, showcase Belgrade’s art scene and its ability to stay relevant. These exhibitions bring the right mix of inspiration, innovation, and playfulness—perfect for anyone who wants to experience the city’s spirit through art, whether you’re here for just a few days or looking to add something new to your weekend.

SneakPeak: Mapping the Invisible

SneakPeak: Mapping the Invisible is a visual study at the intersection of the objective and the personal. This poster exhibition by artist Dušan Lilić starts from the premise that photography—though faithful—often cannot fully convey the essence of a mountain experience, and is therefore insufficient to capture the author’s moment. Mountaineering and the motif of peaks here serve as metaphors for introspection and the search for balance, for exploring one’s own rhythms of breathing, patterns, and thoughts inspired by time spent in nature. Through a combination of photography and abstract design, the exhibition offers insight into how the heights encourage us to look inward and revisit the inner paths we’ve unintentionally strayed from.

WHERE? Kula Gallery, Cetinjska
WHEN? until November 30

Performance “Civility Exercise” – Marija Iva Gocić and Rob Hesp

“My mouth gushes. Saliva surges forward to meet the object, the small round edge and bristles feeling their way around my gums, around the soft edges of my cheek and palette. This small formal penetration – this pressing, rubbing, inside my lips. Slow, precise, careful. Entering myself. My mouth fills, with liquid that spreads and swashes, and a kind of foam. I can feel the lightness of the foam, the bubbles in my mouth. They feel lighter than they should, something artificial or processed. Body chemicals don’t react like that. When my mouth is filled with blood later, it is heavier. Thicker. More definite, stringy. I can taste it. I can smell it. And when I open my lips and push it out, it falls into the bucket with a weighty smack, for a while refusing to mix with the other liquids present. This feels like an apology, a denial – a courtesy, a protestation and attempt at civility. It is not in my nature only to bite, to lie or to bomb. The exercise moves from feeling sensual and erotic to feeling like some kind of untruth, some kind of attempt to manage or maintain or present. To hide a truth rather than to reveal one.
Maybe the truth is stuck in the gaps between your teeth and soft palette, under your tongue or the round tube of your throat.”

Photo: Umetnički prostor U10

WHERE? U10 Art Space
WHEN? November 11, 18-22h

Mythology of Everyday Life

The exhibition Mythology of Everyday Life at DOTS Gallery brings together works by Marina Marković, Astrid Oudheusden, Monika Sigeti, and Ana Simić—artists of different generations and poetics. Each of them sees the everyday as a space where the personal and the universal intertwine, and where art turns the transient into the lasting. Marina Marković places the body at the center of her work, revealing it as a site where the fundamental antagonisms of female existence are inscribed. The body is both a biological fact and a cultural construct, a surface onto which social norms are written. Through pastel tones and precise lines, Marković creates a contrast between external aesthetics and raw experience, showing that the aestheticization of pain can become a means of shaping identity. Astrid Oudheusden uncovers hidden meanings within everyday scenes. Her works do not impose a narrative but create a meditative atmosphere where the private becomes universal. Color, light, and carefully composed frames turn ordinary moments into signs that transcend the personal. Monika Sigeti transforms the familiar into the fantastical, opening a space where identity and the body are not fixed categories. Ana Simić creates digital drawings that turn intimate experience into a new iconography of contemporary womanhood, crafting symbolic images that function beyond the private sphere. According to curator Ana Simona Zelenović, the selection of artists forms a kind of collage—reflecting the diversity of female experience, where the personal becomes the foundation for new myths and collective memory.

WHERE? DOTS Gallery
WHEN? until November 29

Duck Duck Goose…

“This is the second time Selena has exhibited in our gallery, but I believe the best part of her career is yet to come,” said Srđan Šaper, founder of Novembar Gallery, at the exhibition opening. Art historian Dr. Jasmina Čubrilo highlighted two key themes: the context in which Vicković began her artistic work and the recurring motif of the toy—characteristic of the 1990s and distinct from contemporary painting. “The main feature of Selena’s art is her simultaneous depiction of contrasts, discomfort, and pleasure. She doesn’t make the unbearable lightness of being tolerable, but rather, entertaining,” Čubrilo concluded.

The exhibition The Cat Is Circling Around You… presents drawings and paintings created over the past few years and continues the artist’s collaboration with the gallery, where she previously exhibited in 2019. “Openings at Novembar are always wonderful, and I experience my works completely differently there than in my studio,” said the artist.

WHERE? Novembar Gallery
WHEN? until November 30

Photo: Galerija Novembar

Thriller

Symmetry by Julija Zaharijević portrays young girls at their prom in Belgrade during the 2000s, dressed in outfits reminiscent of the era’s recognizable fashion codes. Among them stands a member of the Swiss Guard, wearing a uniform unchanged since the 16th century and inspired by Raphael’s frescoes—visually comical, yet protected by the institution it represents. The painting contrasts the fleeting nature of youth with the permanence of institutional imagery, leaving the role of the guard ambiguous among the girls.

Behin Ruzbeh presents a series of small oil paintings on cotton canvas. Her expression moves between figuration and abstraction, reflecting her interest in how female stereotypes operate within the context of meaning-making. The works depict fashion items and details whose character evokes a sense of both care and unease.

WHERE? Autokomanda Art Space
WHEN? until November 22

Photo: Umetnički prostor Autokomanda

Turning Points Toward Modernity: The Art of Society 1900–1945

This exhibition, which will remain open for the next two years, marks the beginning of a new long-term cycle at the Museum, through which three major presentations will reaffirm the value of its collection, spanning artworks from 1900 to the present day. The first part of the cycle, Turning Points Toward Modernity: The Art of Society 1900–1945, offers a layered reading of the development of art in Serbia and Yugoslavia during the first half of the 20th century.

Through more than 400 works by 150 artists, the Museum presents its collection not as a linear sequence of styles, but as a heritage that continues to shape our understanding of both art and society. The exhibition guides visitors through chronological and thematic chapters: from the first modernist breakthroughs and avant-garde experiments, to the artistic practices of the 1930s that reflect social divisions and introspective questioning. The thematic framework explores the city and the bourgeois identity as chroniclers of modernization, the portrait as the “face of an era,” movement through form and body, and sculpture and relief as possibilities of spatial expression.

A special focus is placed on the Portrait of an Artist series, featuring key figures of pre-war modernism such as Petar Dobrović, Sava Šumanović, Milena Pavlović Barilli, and Nadežda Petrović. The curatorial team—Mišela Blanuša, Dr. Rajka Bošković, and Žaklina Ratković—presents the collection as a dialogue between art and society, reaffirming its significance and the Museum’s central role in preserving and interpreting cultural heritage.

WHERE? Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
WHEN? until March 1, 2027

Photo: Muzej savremene umetnosti Beograd

9 SOLO EXHIBITIONS

Across three venues of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, seven exhibitions have opened as part of the project 9 Solo Exhibitions. In the Art Gallery, works are presented by Nina Ivanović, Milica Crnobrnja Vukadinović, and Goran Despotovski; in the Podroom Gallery, by Ana Mušćet and Mladen Bundalo; and in the Artget Gallery, by Filip Rađenović and Luka Trajković.

Due to budget cuts, the curatorial team of the Cultural Centre decided to merge projects originally planned for the second half of the year into one joint exhibition period. The title of the project also alludes to two exhibitions that could not be realized. Nina Ivanović, in Topčiderka, explores the fate of the Belgrade river and the consequences of human neglect, while Milica Crnobrnja Vukadinović, in Micro Territories, guides visitors through intimate spaces of solitude. Goran Despotovski’s Ascending/Descending (ASC/DESC) features depersonalized figures symbolizing helplessness and inauthenticity. Mladen Bundalo’s Domus Vulgaris examines the home as a living entity with its own history and the challenges of contemporary life. Ana Mušćet’s Corpus: Passion Fruit. Albedo reflects on collective trauma through a video and site-specific installation inspired by those forcibly taken during the Homeland War.

Filip Rađenović’s Charge presents drag characters marked by visible traces of violence, emphasizing the experiences of LGBT+ individuals, while Luka Trajković’s Where I’m Calling From uses photography to convey a cinematic, narrative sensitivity toward untold stories and delicate, almost imperceptible moments.

The 9 Solo Exhibitions project demonstrates how the Cultural Centre of Belgrade responds to financial and social challenges, reaffirming its commitment to supporting contemporary artists and fostering dialogue about whom culture belongs to and for whom it is created.

WHERE? Cultural Centre of Belgrade
WHEN? until December 31