Valentina Knežević is a video artist born in Split, Yugoslavia. She lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany. She works with video as well as with various experimental forms of still images. Especially since 2017, her artistic practice is characterized by a research-based and socio-critical approach. Her art production lies in the field of tension between contemporary art and cinema. After studying theatre, film, and media theory at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, she studied at the Städelschule, primarily with Douglas Gordon, as well as with Laure Prouvost and Hassan Khan. 

Her work has been shown in national and international group exhibitions and film screenings, most recently at VAFT (FIN), Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (DE), Museo MAXXI in Rome (IT), and the Centro Pecci in Prato (IT). Her video works have also been shown at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (FR), the Coop Pavilion at the Bangkok Biennale in Thailand, the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (IT), the 64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (DE), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (DE), and the Woodland Gallery, Minokamo City Museum (JP). In 2016, she received the Frankfurter Künstlerhilfe prize for her video work some.thing no.thing and in 2017, Forum 1822 in Frankfurt honored her film VOICEOVER with a solo exhibition.

At SHIFT visitors will see Knežević’s short film YURVAL (2021), curated by Video Art Festival Turku.

Y U R V A L imagines a future scenario of the human species in search of new expanses. In the vision of Yurval, humans have evolved into Homo Nano Sapiens and are searching for new habitats in outer space. The film explores the idea of the end of history, in which the Earth is no longer the place where utopias and human longings are being realized. The evolution of man through the development of machines has also been overcome and biological matter has merged with technological matter to form a super-organism.