Alex Zivkovic

Alex is a Ph.D. candidate studying modern art and the history of photography, with a specialization in surrealism. His dissertation examines the role of greenhouses, aquariums, and colonial gardens in French art and mass culture (c. 1860-1940). Broadly, his various research projects and publications consider how ecologies, animals, and media interact—as in taxidermy sculptures, silent film, and video art, for example. He previously worked as a project research assistant for SFMOMA’s René Magritte: The Fifth Season (2018) and has two forthcoming catalogue essays accompanying a Remedios Varo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago (2023).

At Columbia, Alex completed an interdisciplinary graduate certificate through the Center for Comparative Media. He has also received a Frieda B. and Milton F. Rosenthal Art History Fellowship (2020-21) and a Riggio Fellowship in Art History (2021-22). His research has been further supported by the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, the Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy, and Dumbarton Oaks. Alex graduated from Stanford University in 2017, receiving a B.A. with distinction in Art History (with honors) and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Publications

“Joan Jonas’s Ecological Portraits: Echo and Narcissus,” Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Criticism 49, no. 1 (March 2022): 63–87.

“‘It’s not really a cat’: Art, Media, and Queer Wildness in Cat People (1942, 1982),” New Review of Film and Television Studies 21, no. 2 (Summer 2023)