Viewing posts from: SEEcult.org

26.08.2012.

AN ARTIST – A VICTIM OR A PROVOCATEUR?

Slaven Tolj: Srđ je naš (Srđ is Ours), Galerija P74, Ljubljana, June 2 – 29, 2012.

By: Žana Vukičević

The fight against corruption, the dissatisfaction with the processes of privatization, the burgeoning of capitalism, as well as the resistance against drastic social stratification as their direct and inevitable consequence are commonplace in a modern democratic society. The phenomena caused by the existence of such negative factors are present and appear almost on a daily basis in the form of public protests, demonstrations, petitions, and similar kinds of civil actions. Nonetheless, almost as a rule, all attempts at rebellion of this kind take place on the principle of the unbalance of forces between the people wanting change and thus standing up together and the rigid structures comprising of financial and political power figures whose influence in decision-making by far surpasses the local context of a certain problem.

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26.08.2012.

WITHOUT RED

Šejla Kamerić: 1395 Days Without Red, Legat Gallery owned by Milica Zorić and Rodoljub Čolaković, Belgrade, 23th May -24th June 2012

By: Vladimir Bjeličić

Twenty years after the siege of the city and as part of Sarajevo Days Festival, Milica Zorić’s and Rodoljub Čolaković’s Legat Gallery presented an independent exhibition by Bosnian artist Šejla Kamerić ’’1395 Days Without Red’’. The title refers to the number of days the Bosnian capital was under siege, when people were advised not to wear anything red, because the snipers could immediately spot them. Šejla Kamerić is a well-known artist throughout the region, but this is her first independent exhibition in Belgrade. Locally, she has been known only by her cooperation with Uroš Đurić. Šejla Kamerić has been creating art for over a decade and is part of the regional contemporary art scene thanks to her authentic socially engaged work. She uses different media (video, photography, installations) to present traumas of war as the main topic, i.e. to present her personal experience of the military conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990’s, as well as various other processes that create or erase national identity. Her work was created during several periods, some of them even a decade ago, which makes this exhibition a presentation of her overall work.

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12.07.2012.

THE GROTESQUE INFANTS OF THE REVOLUTION

Neo N.O.B. Ivan Fijolić, Lauba, May 1st – 26th, 2012

By: Bojan Krištofić

During the declarative commemoration of a few of the existing domestic antifascist holidays, the most influential media and government organs nearly never mention the following fact: in the whirlwind of war and conversion, 2965 monuments of the National Liberation War were ruthlessly ruined in Croatia, some manually, others by explosives, while the political will to appropriately punish the “unknown” vandals was never present then, in the early 1990s, and it mainly isn’t present today either.  Only some of these monuments have been restored, and, among them, one of the undoubted masterpieces of domestic postwar sculpting – Augustincic’s amazing monument of Marshall Tito in his birth town of Kumrovec.  This work of art, which was created in the short-lived phase of rigid Yugoslav socialist realism (from 1945 to 1949), which died down with the breaking of close relations with the USSR, has long since overcome the stylistic obstacles of statehood art, and it has maintained an undeniable aesthetic legitimacy.  The infamous fate of the monument after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia is one of those tragic metaphors that symbolically sums up the essence of the breakup of Yugoslavia.  When looking at this as a whole, in the past twenty years, all the antifascist monuments of various stylistic characteristics (from social realism to the modern abstract) have been regarded as disturbances by political nomenclatures, or, in best-case scenarios, as a necessary evil, as fossils of a buried time which is associated with riots, skirmishing, and outbursts of hate, and, sometimes, physical violence as well.  Very few people, however, rarely uncompromisingly oppose violence against our valuable cultural heritage.

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12.07.2012.

IN THE WELL

Radmila Smiljanić: The Well, directed by: Egon Savin, produced by:  Cultural Institution ‘’Vuk Karadžić’’

By: Nikola Skočajić

Probably the most interesting part of The Well by Radmila Smiljanić, is that it speaks of nationalism from a female point of view and through a female character. In a Serbian village in post-war Bosnia, Miloš and Jasmina live with his mother. She has no other name than Mother, although in this play she would be better named Mother-in-law, and she is very unhappy that the young couple do not have children.  When an offer to build water supply system comes to the village, which would mean selling some family land, other family issues surface. Topic of a mixed marriage between a Serb and a Muslim, in context of selling (Serbian) land, sets off various conflicts between the three main characters in the play. Formally, The Well is a conventionally structured dramatic text, but theme-wise, The Well does not offer anything new. Furthermore, Radmila Smiljanić’s play only reproduces a number of clichés.

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