umj. sur. Katerina Duda

Katerina Duda was born in 1989. in Pula. She graduated in Animation and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts and sociology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. She is employed as an artistic associate at the Academy of Fine Arts. In her artistic practice, she uses a variety of media such as social practice, actions and interventions in public space, as well as documentary film and video. In 2022, she was among the finalists of the Radoslav Putar Award. 2015/16 she stayed at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, as part of the Eastern European Network program; she participated in the program The East is West of the West (Free Connections), within which she exhibited at Mediterranea 18, Tirana, 2017. She is the author of the short documentaries Current (2019) and Pruning (2015), screened and awarded at international and domestic festivals (International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 021 Ostrale Biennale, 25fps, FMFS, etc.). For the film Prunja, she received the Jelena Rajković Award for the best director under 30 years of age. She participates in independent culture programs and is one of the educators at Restart's School of Documentary Film.

In her artistic practice, she most often starts from a specific space, whether it is an urban environment or architecture. She believes that space reflects broader social circumstances and that a site-specific approach, a case study of a certain location, can open common and important questions about the context in which we find ourselves. For example, in a series of works (2014 – 2025), she more or less directly problematizes tourism and the consequences that this industry leaves on space. She starts from the idea that public space is a common good and tries to conquer, occupy and problematize it through her artistic work. Through her practice, she often decides to work with the local community or involve them in the artistic process in some way. Along these lines, the basic format in which she works is the medium of social practice combined with visual notes in the form of photographs, videos or documentary films. She breaks down the artistic process into two phases: one is situational, the one that happens in the field, and the other is the rethinking of the material through film or exhibition, installation and through the choice of media for the daily activation of the work. Lately, she has been exploring ways of transferring the situation – the moment "here and now" into the film medium, where it is not presented exclusively as documentation, but can actively build a film narrative. She sees actions in public space as a moment that invites conversation, a moment that begins and later completes the research process. She recognizes the risks and unexpectedness that non-gallery work or work in public space brings as an opportunity to continuously move the boundaries, whether her own or problematic.

In teaching in the main art subjects (New Art Practices and Multimedia and Multidisciplinary Art), through theoretical frameworks and topics, she encourages students to develop their own research approach and their translation into various media. Through project teaching, she deals with a site-specific approach, the medium of social practice, the dynamics between non-gallery and gallery exhibition spaces.

– Shortcut to the Sea (film) 2023./24. – "I see the forest, I write pasture" (co-authorship with Marta Baradić), work in public space 2021.– 2023. – "Roof, shower, barbecue fuš", multimedia exhibition, installation 2019 – Currents, film 2016 – 2018 – "What do we need from the holdings?", exhibition, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Zagreb 2017 – "Step for the Cortex", two-channel video 2017 – "Thank you, and now nothing more", multimedia exhibition, installation 2015 – Pruning, film