Ana Čvorović (b. Sarajevo, 1981) is a UK-based artist whose practice situates itself at the intersection of psychoanalysis, feminist theory, and spatial politics. Her installations engage the psychodynamics of place, tracing how subjectivity is constituted through displacement, fragmentation, and conditions of precarity.
Central to her work is the sea as both material and symbolic field: a site of crossing, loss, and indeterminacy. Drawing on hydrofeminist thought and the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Čvorović approaches oceanic space as a relational medium, where boundaries between bodies, environments, and temporalities dissolve. Within this framework, marine life emerges not as metaphor alone, but as a mode of thinking survival - an attunement to forms of existence that persist through adaptation, fluidity, and interdependence.
Her installations are constructed through processes of improvisation akin to psychoanalytic free association. Found objects, domestic remnants, industrial fragments, are assembled into precarious, choreographed constellations. These structures enact a logic of splitting and recomposition, where elements exist in tension: holding and collapsing, appearing and disappearing. High-visibility materials operate alongside obscured or inaccessible forms, staging the unstable threshold between recognition and erasure.
Čvorović’s ongoing research with FREEPSY - Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People informs her engagement with radical, non-institutional models of care. These practices articulate what has been described as a ‘mental health commons,’ foregrounding collective, adaptive, and improvised approaches to psychic life. Her sculptural work parallels these conditions, proposing fragile infrastructures in which objects - and by extension, subjects - are sustained through mutual support.
Positioned against the backdrop of war, climate crisis, and forced migration, her installations can be understood as operating at the creative edge of catastrophe. They materialise afterlives: fragmented, provisional worlds that emerge in the wake of rupture. Within these unstable formations, survival is not framed as resolution, but as an ongoing negotiation - an ethics of relation in which resilience is collectively composed.
Bio
Ana Čvorović (b. Sarajevo 1981) came to the UK with her family in 1989, fleeing the impending civil war in Former Yugoslavia. A graduate from the University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art, Čvorović’s installations are an exploration of the psychodynamics of place, specifically in the context of war, migration, socio-economic impoverishment and processes of globalisation.
Čvorović’s solo exhibitions include Fog, curated by Sacha Craddock, at the Wellcome Collection, London (2024); Archipelago at Ballon Rouge, Brussels (2021) and Borders Unfold at Pi Artworks, London (2019). Recent residencies include Arthouse Jersey for the commissioned project No Place Like Home (2023); FAP, Lebanon (2022) supported by the Foundation for Art and Psychoanalysis; and Sculpture Space, NY, US (2018) supported by Arts Council England.
Čvorović has been a recipient of numerous awards and grants including the Shelagh Cluett Award (2021), Arts Council England Grant (2019), a-n Artist Award (2018, 2020), and the Leathersellers Scholarship (2012). She is currently an Artist Researcher within the UKRI-funded project FREEPSY: Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People at the University of Essex.
Education
2011 – 2013 Royal College of Art, MA Fine Art Sculpture
2000 – 2003 University of Brighton, BA Fine Art Painting
Solo Exhibitions
2026 Blue Dreams, Freud Museum, London, UK (forthcoming)
2024 Fog, Wellcome Collection, London, UK
2021 Archipelago, Ballon Rouge, Brussels, Belgium
2020 Borders Unfold, Pi Artworks, London, UK
Group Exhibitions
2025
In Each Other’s View, Hangar Gallery, London, UK
2024
Here, But Somewhere Else, National Gallery of Macedonia, Skopje, Macedonia
2023
Here, But Somewhere Else, Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
No Place Like Home, Arthouse Jersey, Jersey
2022
E70-E75, The Koppel Project, London, UK
Pretty Ugly, Shame, Brussels, Belgium
2018
Ch.ACO Art Fair, Focus section curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Santiago, Chile
Rules of Freedom, curated by Rosalind Davis, Collyer Bristow, London, UK
Borders Unfold, Sculpture Space, NY, USA
Strike Site, curated by Sacha Craddock, BACKLIT Gallery, Nottingham, UK
2017
Strike Site, curated by Sacha Craddock, Pi Artworks, London, UK
2016
Refuse: Refuge: Re-fuse, The Koppel Project, London, UK
Part of Us, Central St Martins, London, UK
Unexpected, curated by Counterpoints Arts & Sarah MacDougall, Ben Uri Gallery, London, UK
Res/Dual, Maddox Arts, London, UK
2015
Freedom Audit, curated by Kathleen Soriano, Maddox Arts at Art15 Art Fair, London, UK
Members' Show, selected by Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat, T.A.P, Southend, UK
2014
In Search of the Miraculous, Floating Island Gallery, London, UK
Art14 Art Fair, Maddox Arts, London, UK
Technopolis, The Departure Foundation, London, UK
Must-Have, Ligne Roset, London, UK
2013
The Tomorrow People, Elevator Gallery, London, UK
A Séance for Geometry, Maddox Arts, London, UK
MA Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
Grants and Awards
2023-2026 UKRI funded Artist research project as part of FREEPSY, University of Essex
2023 Arthouse Jersey Commission
2022 a-n Artist Bursary
2021 Shelagh Cluett Award
2018 Arts Council England Project Grant
2018 a-n Artist Bursary
2017 Shortlisted for the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award
2012 The Leathersellers Scholarship
Residencies
2023 JSKD, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2022-2023 ArtHouse Jersey, Jersey
2022 The Foundation for Art and Psychoanalysis, Lebanon
2018 Sculpture Space, Utica, New York, USA
Collections
The Saatchi Gallery
Private collections in UK, Belgium, Canada, Australia, US
Talks and Conferences
2026
Art and Psychoanalysis Research Group Launch with Emilia Halton-Hernandez, Yuchen Li and Magda Schmukalla, PsyArt Conference, University of Essex, June 2026
Artist Talk and Fog book launch, FREEPSY panel Free Psychoanalytic Clinics and Mental Health Commons, Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter, UK, June 2026
Travelling Concepts: quando a psicanálise viaja, with Raluca Soreanu and Ana Minozzo, at PSILACS, UFMG, Brazil, May 2026
Artist Talk, UWE Bristol, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, March 2026
2025
Artist Talk, Kuma International, History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 2025
Creative Panel: Multi-tonal Reading: Breaking Down the Walls of the Asylum. Collective presentation with FREEPSY at the Northern Network of Medical Humanities conference ‘Tongues’, Online, May 2025
2024
Psychoanalysis and Radical Psychiatry, co-panelist, FREEPSY and Wellcome Collection Conference, London, UK, November 2024
Caring Futures: Contradictions, Transformation and Revolutionary Possibilities, co-panelist, American University in Paris, France, May 2024
Free Clinics and the (Re)inventions of Psychoanalysis, co-panellist, Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS) and Association for Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society (APCS), St Mary’s University of Twickenham, UK, June 2024
2023
Money and Psychoanalysis: Economies of Care, co-panelist, FREEPSY and Freud Museum Conference, Freud Museum, London, UK
2022
BiH Today: Far Away, in conversation with Aleksandra Bilić, Morocco Bound Bookshop, London, UK
2020 Diasporic Art, Memory and Identity, Kuma International, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Available here
2019
Ana Cvorovic in Conversation with Sacha Craddock, Borders Unfold, Pi Artworks, London, UK. Available here
Poetry Reading by Laila Sumpton in collaboration with Counterpoints Arts, Pi Artworks, London, UK. Available here
2018
Who Are We, artist talk as part of Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London, UK
Rules of Freedom, artist and curator-led talk with Rosalind Davis, Collyer Bristow, London, UK
Strike Site, artist talk led by Sacha Craddock, Backlit Gallery, Nottingham, UK.
Available here
2017
Strike Site, artist talk led by Sacha Craddock, Pi Artworks, London, UK.
Available here
2016
Panel discussion with Cointerpoints Arts, Ben Uri Museum, London, UK
In Conversation: Baroness Helena Kennedy, The Koppel Project, London, UK. Available here
Press and Reviews
Čvorović, A. & Schmukalla, M. ‘Art out of Place’, in Communist Hauntings: Aesthetics of Disrupted Times, Studies in the Psychosocial Series, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026 (forthcoming).Čvorović, A. Fog. Artist book accompanying the exhibition Fog, Wellcome Collection, London, as part of the FREEPSY research project. Contributions by Sacha Craddock, Lizaveta van Munsteren, Ewan O’Neill, Julianna Pusztai, Raluca Soreanu and Ana Tomčić. Self-published, 2026.
Čvorović, A. Cover artwork for Territorial Listening and Psychoanalysis in Critical Social Situations: Constructing Clinical Dispositifs, edited by Emília Estivalet Broide & Jorge Broide, Important Little Books in Psychoanalysis series, 1968 Press, 2026.
Talhoș, T. ‘Remembering: Dealing with Trauma Remembrance Culture in Post-war Bosnia Herzegovina’, Most Magazine, August 2024
Erizanu, P. ‘This Bosnian-British artist is fighting to keep the experiences of child refugees alive’, The Calvert Journal, March 2020
White, K. ‘5 Emerging Artists With Shows You Won’t Want To Miss This October’, Artnet, October 2019
Strange, L. ‘Female Solo Exhibitions to See Now’, Go With Yamo, October 2019
May, T. ‘Lost World: Ana Cvorovic’s Sculptures Explore the Reality of Migration and Displacement’, Creative Boom, October 2019
Craddock, S. ‘Review: Borders Unfold’, September 2019
Mills, N. ‘Strike Site at Backlit’, Leftlion, March 2018
Genç, K. ‘Visiting a “Strike Site” at London’s Leading Turkish Gallery’, Daily Sabah, January 2017
Videos
Kuma International – Artists in Conversation: Ana Cvorovic
Laila Sumpton performance at Ana Cvorovic's solo show Borders Unfold
Sacha Craddock on Strike Site at Backlit Gallery
Ana Cvorovic and Sacha Craddock on Strike Site
In Conversation: Baroness Helena Kennedy with artists Ana Cvorovic, Ivica Bonic-Babic, Svetlana Dmitrenko, Yvonne Feng, Sam Gregg, Yu-Xin Su