Dora Budor


Dora Budor is a Croatian artist who lives and works in New York. She has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Early life and education

Budor was born in Zagreb in Croatia and lived there whilst she simultaneously completed a BA in Architecture Studies and an MFA in Design from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb. Budor moved to New York in 2009 where she studied Visual Art at the MFA Program of Columbia University School of The Arts, New York, in 2012.

Work

Budor creates installations, environments, and sculptures, that recall moments of cinematic experience via their atmospheric scenographies. She explores histories of cinema and architecture, in order to merge concepts of reality and fiction in new ecosystems. Her works often contain used movie props, special effects, and historical remnants of utopian architecture. Budor places the history of the found object into a new narrative, evoking an uncanny form of memory and emotional connection in the viewer.
Budor's work has been shown internationally. Her first institutional solo exhibition in the United States was in 2015 at the Swiss Institute in New York, entitled Spring. The exhibition included sculptures made by Budor that include original props from science-fiction movies such as The Fifth Element and Johnny Mnemonic. The same year her works have been exhibited as part of Inhuman at Fridericianum in Kassel. In 2016 Budor exhibited immersive environment Adaptation of an Instrument for Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016, curated by Chrissie Iles, at the Whitney Museum. In 2017 Frieze Projects New York commissioned a new performance Manicomio! and her public sculpture The Forecast was on view for a year as part of an outdoor exhibition Mutations on the High Line in New York. In 2018 she contributed site-specific installation The Preserving Machine for the 13th Baltic Triennial: Give up the Ghost, curated by Vincent Honore, at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania.
She has participated in numerous institutional exhibitions; at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Palais de Tokyo, David Roberts Art Foundation, La Panacee, Aïshti Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art, K11 Art Museum, Museum Fridericianum, Halle für Kunst & Medien, as well as 9th Berlin Biennial, Vienna Biennale, and Art Encounters 2017.
Budor was a recipient of Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant in 2014 and Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2018. In 2019, she was awarded Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts.

Selected Exhibition History