Marko Ilić

I am a specialist in recent and contemporary art, with a particular interest in its intersections with politics and history. My work is broadly concerned with how historical trajectories have shaped today’s art world, including a significant strand of research that engages with post-socialist and anti-imperialist contexts and intellectual frameworks. Much of my scholarship to date has focused on the (post-)Yugoslav region.

In 2021, I published A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia with the MIT Press. Widely reviewed and well received, the book offers the first comprehensive study of Yugoslavia’s alternative art scenes from the 1960s to the 1980s. Examining the work of some of the most significant artists of the late twentieth century in relation to the processes that steered the country’s disintegration, the book also argues that Yugoslavia’s fate should be read as a warning for conflicts currently brewing across the globe – showing how the symptoms of such conflicts often surface first on a cultural level. I discuss the book in more detail in this episode of the MIT Press Podcast, recorded to mark its release.

Alongside the monograph, my writing on global contemporary art has appeared in journals such as Third Text and ARTMargins, as well as in a range of edited volumes and exhibition catalogues – including, most recently, the one accompanying the 2024 Venice Biennale.

I am currently working on a major new project with my colleague Sofia Gotti, Lecturer in Curating at The Courtauld, which examines the intersections between art and populism. While populism has sparked debate across the political spectrum and become a prominent topic in media and public discourse, it has rarely been addressed in art history or curatorial studies – at least not in a systematic way. This project breaks new ground by applying populism as a critical lens through which to examine what is recognised as populist, and what political implications this carries for cultural institutions, art practices, and curating.

I completed my BA in Art History at the University of Cambridge, followed by an MA and PhD at The Courtauld. Before joining Oxford in 2023, I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University College London and lectured at The Courtauld, Newcastle University, and the Universities of Cambridge and York.