It seems the US is not the only country whose Venice Biennale pick is stirring up discontent in the arts community back home.
Prague-based artist Predrag Đaković was tapped to represent Serbia at the 2026 Venice Biennale with a project titled “Across Golgotha to Resurrection.” Serbia’s Ministry of Culture reportedly announced the competition on its website on September 6, with a one-month deadline, but did not announce Đaković’s win. Instead, the announcement appears to have been made via the Serbian artist’s Instagram, which boasts just over 700 followers.
A petition calling for the reversal of the pick has garnered more than 600 signatures at time of writing.
“We believe that his selection is the result of an unprofessional and non-transparent process by the Commission, which abused its authority rather than evaluating the quality of contemporary artistic production in Serbia,” claims the petition, which points out that some members of the commission that selected Đaković “are closely linked to the ruling party,” referring to President Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). It claims that they performed their function “without professional integrity and basic professional ethics.”
The selection, says the petition, represents “yet another manifestation of the collapse of culture in Serbia.” The petition was created by ZUK Informal Art and Culture Collective.
“This year, our colleagues have been exposed to aggressive pressure and repressive measures from the ruling structure, which threatens the autonomy of their work, as well as their working and living conditions,” the petition states. “Artists have been publicly targeted by the highest officials, basic funding has been cut, public resources and institutions are being treated as the private property of the ruling party rather than the public good of all citizens, and all universities in the country have stopped working, because the youth and the future of this country demand change.”
Neither the artist nor the Serbian culture ministry responded to requests for comment.
The Commission that selected the artist, according to a report at Belgrade news site Vreme, included art historian, curator, and acting director of the Serbian Academy of Fine Arts Marijana Kolarić; Jelena Medaković, city secretary for culture of Belgrade; Stanko Blagojević, acting assistant minister in the sector for international relations and European integration in culture; acting assistant minister in the sector for contemporary creativity Miodrag Ivanović; and sculptor Miodrag Miša Rogan.
Đaković’s team, per Vreme, includes curator Tomaš Koudela, who teaches art education at the University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic, and Olga Čučković, a tour guide in Rome.
The petition comes against a backdrop of upheaval in Serbia. The deadly collapse a year ago of the canopy of the recently renovated train station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, gave birth to massive student protests calling for accountability that grew into a nationwide movement. Some 325,000 converged on Belgrade in March. Vučić has accused the protesters of being paid by foreign interests and of being out to destroy Serbia, even calling them “Satanic,” according to writer Nathasha Tripney, adding that the SNS has staged astroturfed counterprotests.
Predrag Đaković, The Last Goodbye of Filip Čučković (2024-25).
Zvonimir Segi
“It’s almost like a civil war outside at some moments,” said artist Marina Markovic, who lives in Belgrade and Paris, in a phone interview. Regarding the Venice pick, she said, “It’s hard to explain the degree of absurdity, but it’s a logical and brutal endpoint of the dismantling of visual art and cultural policy for more than a decade.” She described the selection process as a black box with no transparency and no publication of a short list, which has typically been the case in past years.
“It’s an insult to the entire artistic community,” she said.
Đaković’s website, which describes him as a “Serb-Czech painter who brings colors to the Prague scene,” indicates that he was born in 1964 in Derventa in the former Yugoslavia and earned a painting degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His subjects include the history of the former Yugoslavia, the Holocaust, “the disasters of Communism,” and the Balkan wars, as well as lighter subjects like jazz music.
“I like to paint things that I experience without faking anything,” says the artist’s statement. “My mind is not set on fulfilling any expectations through my paintings but just expressing myself. I also try to stay away from too much social media as it is possible to get distracted by all the digital noise.” Though he appears to have shown internationally, in cities ranging from London to Prague, his site makes no mention of Venice. It does, however, note that he won a gold medal for extraordinary achievements in art from the Serbian president.
“The golden medal for art? It looks like someone is kidding,” Markovic said. “No one has heard of him. His paintings are like something you would find on the street—not to offend anybody who shows their work in the street.”
In a phone interview, Serbian artist Ivana Ivković called the Biennale pick symptomatic of the government’s increasing intrusion into the cultural sphere. “We used to be left alone,” she said, “but now they will not leave us any free space.”
She pointed out that the Serbian Parliament voted last month to strip cultural protections from an architectural landmark in the country, clearing the way for US President Donald Trump’s family to erect a luxury hotel there.
“It’s like a bad movie,” she said. “We are tired of being ironic. It’s like, Come on. We are waiting to touch the bottom and the bottom never comes.”
The broader culture scene has borne the brunt of establishment disdain, writes Tripney, noting that a former paramilitary leader was appointed president of the board of the National Theater of Belgrade and an SNS party member was made director of the prominent Šabac Theater.
The Exit music festival, which takes place in Novi Sad, recently noted that when Irena Joveva, a member of the European Parliament, visited Belgrade and met with members of Serbia’s cultural community, Exit Festival founder Dušan Kovačević told her that “the entire free-thinking cultural and creative scene in Serbia is on the verge of extinction.”
