New work, exhibitions and notes from Aleksandra's studio in Dubai.
The Mask: This ain't a road
This ain't a road.
Look closer. Perspective #1 and Perspective #2 are two roads made from discarded surgical masks, enhanced with acrylic detail. The pleats become the asphalt, and the white lines run on into the distance.
We wore them to protect one another, and then we threw them away. Millions now lie in streets, parks, rivers and oceans. The Mask asks us to reconsider every object we use and throw away.
See both works in person at DIFC Art Nights, Gate Village, 12–15 November, 5–10 pm. Hit the road, and find the wall.
The whole series: cvijanovicaleks.art/difc-art-nights
Perspective #1 · Perspective #2 · The Mask · Mixed media · 49 × 32 cm each
Five bare trees stand in a row against a dusk sky, their branches spreading into a dense black web. On every trunk hangs a bundle of used masks, white and blue, tied on like an offering, or left behind like litter.
At 160 cm wide it is the widest work in The Mask. Like every work in the series, it starts from a scene of abandoned masks and is finished with acrylic detail. What do we throw away, and where does it end up?
Six works from The Mask are on the wall at DIFC Art Nights, Gate Village, 12–15 November. The whole series, The Forest included, is at cvijanovicaleks.art/difc-art-nights
The Forest, from The Mask. Mixed media, 160 × 49 cm.
Look closer. The landscapes of The Mask are scenes of abandoned masks, enhanced with acrylic detail. A snowy peak, a road at night, a stretch of sky: each one began as something we wore to protect one another, and then threw away.
For centuries the mask connected people to something greater than themselves, from African ceremony to Greek theatre. The pandemic gave it a darker counterpart: millions of discarded masks in streets, parks, rivers and oceans. This series asks us to reconsider every object we use and throw away.
See the works in person at DIFC Art Nights, Gate Village, 12–15 November, 5–10 pm. Find the wall, and look closer.
The whole series: cvijanovicaleks.art/difc-art-nights
From 19 to 22 November, The Calendar by academic painter Aleksandra Cvijanović will be shown at World Art Dubai, at Dubai World Trade Centre, stand OB04.
The Calendar is one year kept as a diary in paint: twelve large canvases, each built day by day from small paintings, a personal record of hopes, disruptions and small joys. One painted day is singled out from every month and stands on its own.
The canvases measure 120 × 100 cm each, acrylic on canvas. They are best seen in person: come and find them at stand OB04.
World Art Dubai · 19–22 November 2026 · Dubai World Trade Centre · Stand OB04
Is it absolute, or does every day keep its own time? The Calendar is Aleksandra Cvijanović's personal diary of one year: 365 days, painted one by one, gathered into twelve large canvases.
Seven of the months, each 120 × 100 cm in acrylic on canvas, will hang together at World Art Dubai. They were never meant for a screen. Come and see them in person.
World Art Dubai · 19–22 November 2026 · Dubai World Trade Centre, Za'abeel Halls 2–3 · Stand OB04
Art Kitchen, continued: fourteen more works from the studio.
A found object study, The Wheel, and a mixed media Facebook. Two Perspective works in Xerox transfer. People and the diptych Behind in combined technique. Untitled acrylics on canvas and two untitled ships in combined technique. Three Marocco canvases and a pair of Postcards.
Art Kitchen gathers fragments from different periods of Aleksandra Cvijanović's work: moments of exploration, transition, experimentation and reflection that have shaped her visual language over time.
Thirty small paintings, one for every day of the month, laid out on the canvas like a page of a calendar. Here each day is a letter of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet: the first, А, sits alone at the top in red and gold, and the rest follow in rows, each in its own colour, several of them in gold. One of its days, the 18th of November, also stands on its own as a separate painting: a pale, almond-shaped form on deep magenta.
The art historian Marija Milenković reads November as a gloomy, heavy month that brings an alphabet of life and of language, a letter of love and a glossary of every day. Each letter, she writes, carries thousands of words, a certain tone and symbol, and a handful of possibilities: the making of a future language of tradition.
November, from The Calendar. Acrylic on canvas, 120 × 100 cm, 2009. The 18th of November, acrylic on canvas, 30 × 30 cm.
See The Calendar in person at World Art Dubai, 19–22 November, Dubai World Trade Centre, stand OB04.
"Art Kitchen is a curated selection of works drawn from various cycles throughout my artistic journey. Rather than representing a single, self-contained series, this section brings together fragments from different periods: moments of exploration, transition, experimentation, and reflection that have shaped my visual language over time." Aleksandra Cvijanović
A mixed media Rubik's Cube, figures and portraits in combined technique, acrylics on canvas, collages from Montenegro and lanterns from Morocco. Eleven works in one carousel.
Under a night sky with a small moon and a few stars, a crumpled white mask rises into a range of snowy peaks. Its folds become ridges, and fine hatched lines give them shadow and weight.
Like every work in The Mask, it starts from a scene of an abandoned mask and is finished with acrylic detail. Something made to be worn once and thrown away becomes, for a moment, a mountain. Where does it go after that?
The peaks of Kilimanjaro, from The Mask. Mixed media, 40 × 40 cm.
Thirty-one small paintings, one for every day, laid out on the canvas like a page of a calendar. October gathers faces from old portraits, painted plates and wall clocks, a pair of wings, a few signs and a single word: LOVE. One of its days, the 21st of October, also stands on its own as a separate painting: three red poppies on a pale blue plate.
The art historian Marija Milenković reads October in a string of phrases that, in Serbian, all begin with the letter O: an original October, a homage to all things October, an observation of circumstances, the objectivity of the obvious, a landmark and a mirror that revokes the ordinary.
October, from The Calendar. Acrylic on canvas, 120 × 100 cm, 2009. The 21st of October, acrylic on canvas, 30 × 30 cm.
See The Calendar in person at World Art Dubai, 19–22 November, Dubai World Trade Centre, stand OB04.
Old photographs and the silhouettes of familiar cities turn into clocks: the instrument we invented to measure time, and the one that ends up measuring us.
The cycle has 24 works in combined technique, acrylic on canvas with Xerox transfer. Clock faces bend into spirals, mirror images and mechanisms, and Roman and Arabic numerals change places. Aleksandra conceived the works to be hung from the smallest format to the largest, so that time keeps growing the more we measure it, until it becomes large enough to swallow us. This carousel follows the same order, from a 20 × 20 cm canvas to two works of 80 × 60 cm.
"Man is nobody and nothing, a traveler on earth, a passerby in this passing time, a shadow in the sun." Ivo Andrić
The Clock, a cycle by the Dubai-based academic painter Aleksandra Cvijanović. Combined technique, from 20 × 20 to 80 × 60 cm.
A discarded mask lies in the long grass like a small boat run aground. Across it, in black marker, the question that gives the work its title, in Serbian: "Kud plovi ovaj brod???" Beside it, in lilac paint, a few words repeat down the dark grass: "voli me, ne voli me". Loves me, loves me not, the old game of pulling petals from a flower.
Like every work in The Mask, it starts from a scene of an abandoned mask and is finished with acrylic detail. An object made to protect us, left behind to drift. Where is it going, and who will pick it up?
Where is this ship sailing?, from The Mask. Mixed media, 44 × 33 cm.
Twelve months of The Calendar, each followed by the one day painted on its own: the eye of 29 January, the sweets of February, a face in March, all the way to the golden trees of December.
The Calendar, acrylic on canvas. See The Calendar in person at World Art Dubai, 19–22 November, Dubai World Trade Centre, stand OB04.
For thousands of years the mask has stood between the material and the spiritual, from African tribal ceremony to the theatre of ancient Greece. The pandemic gave it a darker afterlife: millions of discarded masks left in streets, parks, rivers and oceans.
In this cycle, discarded masks become landscapes. Their folds turn into mountain ridges and dunes, a road running into the dark, a forest at dusk, all finished with acrylic detail. Every work asks the same quiet question: what do we throw away, and what does it cost the world around us? Mixed media.
Twelve canvases, one for every month. Each is built from small daily paintings, and together they read like a diary: sweets in February, faces in March, maps of the city in April, the white of hospital corridors in May, the alphabet in November, holiday cards in December. Hopes, disruptions and small joys, recorded as they came.
From every month one day stands on its own, painted separately at 30 × 30 cm. Acrylic on canvas, 120 × 100 cm each.
See The Calendar in person at World Art Dubai, 19–22 November, Dubai World Trade Centre, stand OB04.
