Sveta Kletina & Evgeni Gertsenstein are a Belgrade-based artist duo whose 17-year creative and life partnership serves as the foundation for a unique dialogue between structural craftsmanship and cinematic narrative. Their joint practice reinterprets classical themes—duality, sacrifice, and the human condition—through a sophisticated material language of leather, wood, and "treated" paper-mâché. Sveta Kletina brings over 20 years of expertise in the "architecture of footwear" to the duo. A graduate of the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (BFA) and CERCAL (Italy), her work has evolved from high-level bespoke craftsmanship to fine art sculpture. A two-time winner of the Global Footwear Awards (2020, 2023) and the International Design Awards (IDA), Sveta views the "pair" as a classical metaphor for human duality and unbreakable connection. Evgeni Gertsenstein is a multidisciplinary artist whose sculptural practice is deeply informed by his background as an award-winning filmmaker. A graduate of Sapir College, Evgeni’s cinematic work earned "Best Film of the Year" honors at the Haifa International Film Festival. Today, he translates that storytelling into raw, material forms, using specialized paper-mâché techniques to materialize the "invisible inner life"—the compression of passion, love, and modern burnout. Together, Kletina and Gertsenstein bridge the gap between the physical architecture of relationships and the psychological pressures of the modern age, creating a "Modern Classic" body of work that is both timeless and urgently contemporary.
