Frieze Sculpture 2026: Metanoia by Ivana Bašić

The Regent's Park, London

Ivana Bašić (b. 1986, Belgrade)

Following Bašić’s participation in Whispers on the Horizon, the 14th Taipei Biennial, Metanoia is touring to The Regent’s Park in London for Frieze Sculpture, curated by Fatoş Üstek. Bašić’s participation in Frieze Sculpture preceeds two forthcoming institutional solo shows.

Bašić draws on the weight of history to examine the body’s instability and the potential for transformation. Through sculpture and installation, she merges tangible materials with intangible forces, like breath, pressure and absence, creating forms that balance fragility and metamorphosis.

Metanoia draws inspiration from Spomeniks – otherworldly concrete war memorials erected across former Yugoslavia between 1945 and the 1990s, with the purpose of unifying a nation fractured by wars. Bašić reimagines the Flower Monument in Jasenovac, designed by Bogdan Bogdanović as the kind of breathing machine – animating the glass vessels that inhale and exhale through race-car manifolds.

The sculpture combines concrete, glass, copper, breath, and race-car exhaust components into a cluster of blooming, lotus-like forms. Its petals unfurl towards the sky, while a central copper heart blossoms to reveal a delicate glass core filled with dust. Suspended glass vessels inhale and exhale through the exhaust pipes, creating a system for Pneuma—the Greek for both "breath" and "spirit."

Charged by the artist’s childhood experiences of violence and brutality during the collapse of her native Yugoslavia, Metanoia embodies the yearning for unity that lies deep within the human condition and contemplates what endures when political ideals fracture and personal identities fragment.

Balancing between memorial and organism, Metanoia addresses separation, longing and the unattainable desire for wholeness. It transforms the public language of a monument into something intimate and unstable, where rebirth is envisioned but never fully realized.