Trained as an architect, Croatian-born artist Dora Budor surveys the sites where the built world and private life work upon one another, focusing on the continuing and inevitable encroachment of commercial relations. In the lecture Sidebar, Budor brings together a selection of exhibitions from the past five years which are concerned with techniques of the built environment and various forms of psychosocial control induced by it. Along the lines of privatization and marketization, Budor hones in on the dissolution of life as a shared and consistent social form.

Employing a wide material range – including video, sculpture, installation, and sound – Budor works with the context and avoids a signature style, highlighting dedication to the exhibition-form as her medium. This acts as a spring for a variety of other activities, such as curating exhibitions, organizing screenings, writing, lecturing, and group study.

Dora Budor (b. 1984, Croatia) is a New York-based artist and writer. She studied at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Zagreb. Her recent solo exhibitions were held at Nottingham Contemporary (2024), De Ateliers, Amsterdam (2024), Galerie Molitor, Berlin (2023), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2022), GAMeC Bergamo (2022), Progetto, Lecce (2021), Kunsthalle Basel (2019) and 80WSE, New York (2018). Budor’s work is on view in Hard Ground at MoMA PS1 in New York, and the 15th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Previously, her work has been featured in international exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial, New York (2024); Venice Biennale (2022); October Salon | Belgrade Biennale (2021); Tbilisi Biennale 2021 (2021); 2nd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2020); Geneva Sculpture Biennale (2020); Istanbul Biennial (2019); Baltic Triennial, Vilnius (2018); Vienna Biennale (2017); Art Encounters, Timișoara (2017) and Berlin Biennial (2016), as well as numerous group exhibitions. Budor was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019. Her recently published books include Autoreduction, Continent, and By the Highway (with Ser Serpas and Rafik Greiss). She is currently a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen, and a regular contributor to art publications such as Mousse Magazine and Texte zur Kunst.