Klelija Zhivkovikj, born in 1989, is a transdisciplinary artist based in Skopje, North Macedonia. Trained across several design disciplines, her work is a theoretical, material and experiential inquiry into boundaries, the physical, psychological, emotional or spiritual barriers we create to be able to connect with ourselves, other beings and ecosystems.
Her introduction to the art scene in The Balkans was the project “Small Victories”, documenting small, but significant public or private interventions that stood in defiance to the oppresive political landscape of the time. From 2016 until 2023, she was a part of a community developing the project “Some Call Us Balkans”, a collective effort to explore possibilities for new conceptions of the Balkans through artistic research practices. As a part of this project, she co-authored the “SCUB Research Methodology - A Living Document” and the artistic research project “Terms of Encounter” with Hana Milenkovska and Klementina Ristovska.
In 2021, Studio Private Print published her first artist book “Prototyping tenderness: a personal log of a dying world”, and hosted her solo exhibition by the same name. She was awarded the “Ladislav Barisic” award from AICA Macedonia for her research proposal “Design for resurgence” in 2022. In 2023 she received the “DENES” award for young visual artists under 35. She has participated in several group exhibitions in North Macedonia and internationally, including The Biennale of the Western Balkans in Ioannina, “It’s easier to breathe underground” in Skopje and The Biennial of Young Artists and “The event of a thread: Global narratives in textile” at the Museum of Contemporary Art - Skopje. Her latest solo exhibition opened in December 2024 at the Multimedia center of the National Gallery of North Macedonia “Mala Stanica”.
Her introduction to the art scene in The Balkans was the project “Small Victories”, documenting small, but significant public or private interventions that stood in defiance to the oppresive political landscape of the time. From 2016 until 2023, she was a part of a community developing the project “Some Call Us Balkans”, a collective effort to explore possibilities for new conceptions of the Balkans through artistic research practices. As a part of this project, she co-authored the “SCUB Research Methodology - A Living Document” and the artistic research project “Terms of Encounter” with Hana Milenkovska and Klementina Ristovska.
In 2021, Studio Private Print published her first artist book “Prototyping tenderness: a personal log of a dying world”, and hosted her solo exhibition by the same name. She was awarded the “Ladislav Barisic” award from AICA Macedonia for her research proposal “Design for resurgence” in 2022. In 2023 she received the “DENES” award for young visual artists under 35. She has participated in several group exhibitions in North Macedonia and internationally, including The Biennale of the Western Balkans in Ioannina, “It’s easier to breathe underground” in Skopje and The Biennial of Young Artists and “The event of a thread: Global narratives in textile” at the Museum of Contemporary Art - Skopje. Her latest solo exhibition opened in December 2024 at the Multimedia center of the National Gallery of North Macedonia “Mala Stanica”.