Blažo Kovačević

Blažo Kovačević is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and curator born in Montenegro. He received a B.F.A. in studio art from the University of Montenegro in 1997 and an M.F.A. in studio art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2000. Kovačević’s work is driven by his fascination with conflict and is represented through the exploration and confrontation of contradicting visual elements, incompatible materials, ideas and behavior, art and technology. Social phenomena are a reoccurring theme in his work. In his most recent work, he focuses on urgent contemporary issues related to privacy and migration. He interprets these conditions as a call for reflection, revolt, and action. To point to this acute problem, informed by media and police reports, Kovačević recreates documented incidents of human trafficking by building digital simulations and reenactments, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in these perilous situations. Kovačević has exhibited nationally and internationally in many solo, group, and invitational exhibits. Lives in Montenegro and USA. Kovačević had his work presented in the United States and Europe in numerous solo and group exhibits. Kovačević has exhibited internationally in many solo and invitational exhibits: Incited Still, VISARTS, Rockville, Maryland; Argumentative Reality, LUMA festival, Antony Brunelli Fine Arts gallery, Binghamton, NY, USA; Incited/Prisiljeni, Dowd Gallery—SUNY Cortland, Cortland & National gallery, Belgrade, Serbia; Case/Predmet, Naval Heritage Collection Museum, Porto Montenegro, Tivat, Montenegro & Art Gallery Sue Ryder, Herceg Novi, Montenegro; Sightline/ss, Antony Brunelli Fine Arts gallery, Binghamton, NY; Discipline and Punish: Blazo Kovacevic’s Probe, Nova Galerija, Belgrade, Serbia; Probe 2 at the 4th Festival of Science—SUTRA, National Bank of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia; Discipline and Punish: Blazo Kovacevic’s Probe, Atelier Dado, National Museum of Montenegro, Cetinje, Montenegro & O3ONE Art Space, Belgrade, Serbia; Probe, Atelier Dado, National Museum of Montenegro; Maps and Cuts, Hurong Lou Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Continental Breakfast, Gallery Haos, Belgrade, Serbia; Liquidation, Cultural Center of Serbia and Montenegro in Paris, France; Liquidation, Gallery Siano, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Dado and Contemporary Montenegrin Printmaking (Dado et les graveurs du Monténégro), XVII éme Biennale Internationale de la Gravure de Sarcelles, Sarcelles, France & ’Atelier Gabrielle, Salernes, France; Probe, Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, Athens, GA, USA; First Salon Petar Lubarda, Blue Castle, Cetinje, Montenegro; Moderne Kunst Aus Montenegro—Stephansdom, Vienna, Austria; International Festival of Alternative Cultural Exchange (F.A.C.E.) - Belgrade & Novi Sad, Serbia; Cluj and Bucharest, Romania; Plovdiv and Sofia, Bulgaria; Sarajevo, Bosnia; Strasbourg, France; Eindhoven, The Netherlands; & Utopia Station at the 50th Venice Biennial, Italy. He organized the first International Festival of Digital Arts in Montenegro in 2004. Recently, he participated in the “Futurities, Uncertain Cornell Biennial, Local Futurities” juried satellite group exhibition at Cherry Gallery, Ithaca, NY. Kovačević received numerous awards for his work, and has been interviewed and reviewed in relevant art publications and various other media outlets such as Steven Heller, “The Daily Heller: Toying With the Southern Border Crisis,” PRINT Magazine; Steven Brower, “Works of War”: Seymour Chwast,” Design Issues Journal, MIT Publication, Volume 36, Number 3, Summer 2020; Kathryn Kramer, “Blazo Kovacevic: Incited”; ARTPULSE, Volume 9, Number 31, 2018; Dimitry Tetin, “Milton Glaser: Modulated Patterns,” Design Issues Journal, MIT Publication, Volume 34, Number 2, Spring 2018; Steven Brower, “Blazo Kovacevic is Incited”, PRINT Magazine. His work is part of several private and museum collections. He has been a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Montenegro since 1997. Kovačević is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Design at the University of Delaware and, for many years, served as an Art Director of the Binghamton University Art Museum. 

Blažo Kovačević’s practice is rooted in conflict—not just as a theme, but as a tool of disruption. Through contradictory materials, unstable technologies, and politicized imagery, he interrogates systems of control, surveillance, and constructed identity. His work resists neutrality, insisting that all socially engaged art is inherently political—and that art must challenge, not comfort.

Rejecting the aesthetics of passivity, Kovačević prefers rupture over resolution. His projects transform conventional and marginal materials into confrontational visual codes—an alchemy of technique and resistance. Whether recontextualizing airport security scans or hijacking technologies of surveillance, his work exposes how power infiltrates the intimate: our bodies, our belongings, our data, and our images.

In works like Probe, Sightliness, and InContext, X-rays of personal possessions and bodies become raw material for aesthetic and ideological subversion. These pieces don’t just document intrusion—they replicate it, turning the viewer into both witness and voyeur. What begins as forensic image becomes a mirror to our complicity in systems that strip us of privacy and humanity.

Incited takes this even further, placing audiences inside the re-created wreckage of a migrant transport van using VR and augmented reality. Based on a real tragedy, the project shifts between clinical detachment and immersive embodiment—forcing viewers to confront the violence of borders, bureaucracy, and the dehumanizing gaze of media.

The LEGO Immigration Series uses absurdity and play as subversive tactics—rendering scenes of trafficking, border walls, and migrant journeys in a medium associated with childhood innocence. The result is both disarming and disturbing, collapsing the distance between innocence and complicity, imagination and brutality.

At the center of Kovačević’s work is a demand: to see what is normally hidden, to question what is normalized, and to engage with the uncomfortable truths behind security, legality, and representation. His art refuses easy answers. It pushes against systems that erase, scan, categorize, and confine—asking instead how we might reclaim visibility, agency, and freedom.