CRITICS HAVE CHOOSEN 2026: It’s only the end of the world
Curated by: Sofija Milenković
Artists: Marija Avramović and Sam Twidale; Pavle Banović and Jelena Nikolić, Jakub Daněk, Lidija Delić, Iva Kuzmanović, Tamara Spalajković, Jakub Daněk and Daniel Rajmon
The author of the 2026 edition of the traditional annual exhibition Critics Have Chosen – critics’ reception of contemporary visual art, continuously presented at the Art Gallery since 1967, is the art historian Sofija Milenković, the winner of the Lazar Trifunović Award for 2020.
The exhibition It’s Only the End of the World brings together artists connected by an interest in speculating on worlds that represent a discontinuity with the realm of our empirical experience and/or in exploring potential scenarios of the near or distant future. Developed within a methodological framework shaped by notions of science fiction, worldbuilding, and speculation, their works construct various alternative realities and worlds (of the future), most often envisioned as dystopias oriented toward some form of collapse or emerging as the result of its aftermath. Even when they take the form of a symbiotic utopia, their point of departure lies in some of the urgent issues of our present, such as the relationship between the human and the non-human, the dysfunctionality of dominant systems, and the omnipresence of technology. While drawing our attention to these problems and encouraging reflection on their causes and consequences and their systemic and structural interconnectedness, as well as their potential solutions, the works brought together in this exhibition also open up a space for reflecting on the ambivalent relationship we have toward them and the place they occupy in our everyday lives.
Sofija Milenković is a research assistant at the Institute for Art History, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. She is a PhD candidate at the Department of History of Art of the same Faculty, where she completed her bachelor’s and master’s studies. She also completed her master’s studies in art history at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, as a recipient of a French Government scholarship. Her research focuses on modern art, transnational art history, and artistic connections between Belgrade and Paris. She is the author of scholarly and professional papers, exhibition texts, and reviews. She is a collaborator in the project Chronology of Exhibiting Sculpture in Serbia 1945–2000. She has received the “Lazar Trifunović” Award (2020).
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The article “It’s only the end of the world” by Sofija Milenković can be read HERE.
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About the artists:
Marija Avramović and Sam Twidale have been working together as the artist duo Xenoangel since 2017. Marija completed a master’s degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and then another one at ENSBA in Paris, while Sam is a self-taught programmer with a degree in musicology from the University of Liverpool. Their artistic practice is based on the ideas of world-building — creating fictional universes and telling stories. Their different backgrounds have led them to a multidisciplinary approach that includes real-time animation, generative art, VR and AR, as well as painting, installation, writing, and music. Since the beginning of their collaboration, their works have explored symbiotic relationships, animism, coexistence, hybrid forms and entanglements within fictional landscapes.
https://xenoangel.com/
Pavle Banović was born in 1998 in Belgrade and is currently based in Vienna. Among others, they exhibited and worked with spaces in Belgrade, Ljubljana, New York, Vienna, Novi Sad and Barcelona. They are the 2023 recipient of the YVAA Award for Serbia, as well as a participant of the 2024 Futures Photography programme, nominated by Organ Vida. They were a member of the young artistic collective The Applause Institue, as well as the project D.U.O – Society of Joint Responsibility.
https://pavvvlebanovic.cargo.site/
@pavvvle
Jakub Daněk is a miltimedia artist/hacker based in Brno. Through speculative scifi worlds he constructs bridges that can be melted, crossed or rebuild. Using 3D and formal cinema approaches he observes the cyberspace with dark agent like glasses and skinny jeans and small radar ready lurking for all evilness within.
Lidija Delić (b. 1986 in Nikšić, Montenegro) graduated in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Belgrade in 2010, and earned a PhD in the Multimedia Art Department from the University of Arts, Belgrade in 2015. She is co-founder and member of artist-run U10 Art Space in Belgrade. In 2017 she was selected to represent Serbia at the Biennale des jeunes créateurs de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (BJCEM) in Tirana, Albania. Lidija was a finalist in the 2017 D.B. Mangelos Award, and she exhibited at the 57th and 60th October Salon, Belgrade. In 2019, Lidija was at Artist-in-Residence program organized by Balkan Projects and Swiss Institute in New York. Lidija was a representative of Montenegro at the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2022. Currently Lidija works at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade as an associate professor.
www.lidijadelic.com
Iva Kuzmanović was born in 1984 in Belgrade, where she graduated in 2011 from the Painting Department in the class of Professor Čedomir Vasić at the Faculty of Fine Arts. Since 2007, she has been a member of NKA/ICA, an organisation that, under the patronage of Biljana Tomić, organised international workshops throughout a decade (2000–2010), in which Kuzmanović participated both as an artist and as a cultural mediator. In 2012, she co-founded the U10 Art Space, and as a long-standing member of the U10 Collective she has taken part—whether as organizer, curator, or artist—in numerous group and solo exhibitions, as well as in a range of other cultural and artistic projects. Since 2024, she has been employed as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. Kuzmanović’s primary medium is painting, most often oil on canvas. Her practice also extends into different medias using sound, video, neon light, and other materials and elements for her ambient installations. Arcadian landscapes, memento mori motifs, tropical landscapes, and aeroplane crashes are recurring imageries in her work, through which she explores themes of temporality, escapism, and fatalism.
Jelena Nikolić (1990) observes, approaches, enlarges, repeats. Her practice focuses on ordinary things. From an early age, she dreamed of becoming a painter and a swimmer. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, completing undergraduate studies at the Painting Department and a master’s degree at the New Media Department. She has had four solo exhibitions and participated in several group exhibitions and workshops in Serbia and abroad. She lives and works in Belgrade.
Daniel Rajmon is a former professional football player and now a professional artist focused on the edge of nihilism and activism. He’s currently living in Brno, CZ.
https://daniel-rajmon.com/
Tamara Spalajković (1996, Belgrade) is an artist and a researcher. She is currently studying for a PhD at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology, where she is engaged in artistic research, creating docu-fictional videos that explore the impact of urbanization on multispecies coexistence. Together with Daniel Rajmon, she has the band Keiko Sei, and independently creates experimental electronic music as hiding season. Since autumn 2025, she has worked as an assistant at the Kabinet of audiovisual technologies at FaVU VUT. Tamara was awarded the Prize of Jozef Hlávka for student researchers and was supported by the Fondation for Young Talents Dositeja in the past.
Sofija Milenković is a research assistant at the Institute for Art History, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. She is a PhD candidate at the Department of History of Art of the same Faculty, where she completed her bachelor’s and master’s studies. She also completed her master’s studies in art history at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, as a recipient of a French government scholarship. Her research focuses on modern art, transnational art history, and artistic connections between Belgrade and Paris. She is the author of scholarly and professional papers, exhibition texts and reviews. She is a collaborator in the project Chronology of Exhibiting Sculpture in Serbia 1945–2000. She has received the “Lazar Trifunović” Award (2020).