Sandra Sara Raes Oklobdzija (born 1980 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, now Serbia) is a Serbian-Belgian artist, artivist, philosopher, and academic based in Brussels since 2012. Trained as a philosopher (University of Belgrade), actress and theatre director (Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade), and further enriched by visual culture and film studies (Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Antwerp), she focuses her work and research in art and culture on the complex web of relationships between migration, (re)building community, equality, and collectiveness.
Working under the dual identity of “Sara Oklobdzija” (artist and researcher) and “Sandra Raes” (producer and programmer), Sara is a socially engaged artist with a unique speculative documentary and probabilistic theatre practice, and a researcher who raises sharp questions on temporality, contingency, identity, migration, memory, and collective responsibility. Together with co-thinkers, artists and activists, she co-founded INFUZIJA vzw in 2003 – a “Centre for the Cultural Decentralisation of Serbia.” Operating in a post-communist, post-war region under economic and cultural sanctions, but focused on disintegration and decentralisation, INFUZIJA successfully delivered a number of influential projects, including: Theatre-Shelter – a series of 100 pop-up performances in rural southern Serbia, and the HOSTEL Yellowbed project – a legal youth hostel for EU backpackers that also housed an ‘illegal’ art centre for international exchange and peer education.
Since 2012, Sara has been based in Belgium, where she continues to ‘play’ with identity, reality, and (mis)representation, working at the intersection of performance, visual arts, and community building. She increasingly combines her practice as an artist and researcher (Sara Oklobdzija) with her work as programmer and producer (Sandra Raes). In 2019, she joined ROBIN vzw as general and artistic director; in 2020, she founded KOROW vzw – a “Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Social Diagnostics & Social Correction.” Since 2021, alongside her core organisation ROBIN, she has also been a house artist at the Antwerp-based arts centre Monty. Her performance De Knoop was presented at the DANSAND festival 2022, and her solo exhibitions Oh Bread & Games and Re.Habitat were on display for several months at the exhibition space of Pianofabriek.As the driving force behind the campaign Towards Apartheid Free Zones, she organised several moments of reflection and premiered her performance I’m.potent (autumn 2024). In spring 2026, she premiered her latest performance, M.O.L. – Maatschappelijke Oriëntatie voor Locals, at KVS Brussels, while continuing her PhD research (RITCS/VUB) titled The School of Two-Sided Integration, or “How to Build a Functional Host Society?