SERBIA – FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
EXHIBITION
THURSDAY SEP 23 - TUESDAY JAN 11, 2011
Austrian Cultural Forum New York
In the exhibition Serbia - Frequently Asked Questions, eighteen artists from seven countries took a close look at the conditions in one of Europe’s edgiest, most exciting countries. For better or worse.
A sunny late summer day in Belgrade. Seemingly unnoticed, a young woman strolls through the inner city streets. In her right hand she is carrying a shopping bag, in her left a Kalashnikov rifle. No one seems to notice her. For four weeks, eight hours a day, the scene is repeated almost without interruption. The actions of the woman’s fellow residents shed light on the present day mindset of the population in what was once Yugoslavia’s largest republic. No one is afraid of her; the majority of citizens do not even notice the woman with the AK-47. Milica Tomić, born in 1973, is one of eighteen artists from seven countries who were invited to question contemporary Serbia in the context of Serbia - Frequently Asked Questions, an exhibition which opened at the ACFNY in September 2010, and which Art in America called "a defiant stance toward oversimplification, be it aesthetic or geopolitical." At the very latest with the outbreak of the first Yugoslav war in 1991, when Slovenia seceded from the Yugoslav Federation and triggered a domino effect, Serbia was stigmatized by the majority of the Western media. The atrocities of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular had branded the Serbs as intolerant and nationalistic in the minds of many onlookers. When the war over the Albanian-dominated Kosovo started in 1998, the cliché seemed to find confirmation.
On view through mid-January 2011, the exhibition critically examined these dark chapters in European history, not least by attempting to challenge stereotypes and categorizations through the various approaches and perspectives of the participating artists. Rasa Todosijević, for example, an internationally known artist from Belgrade, takes a consciously ironic look at Serbian history. His installation, Gott liebt die Serben (God Loves the Serbs) plays with languages and symbols from nearly all the political eras his country witnessed in the twentieth century: monarchy, fascism, national socialism, communism, and democracy a la Milošević. Zoran Todorović’s installation, Warmth, which Joshua Decter deemed "the moste unnerving work" in his Artforum review, confronts the viewer with blankets made of three tons of “genuine Serbian” human hair. The piece was a sensation at the Venice Biennal in 2009 and was now on view in the USA for the first time. Most of the hair comes from Serbian soldiers, whose head is shaved when they join the army in their country. Conversely, Biljana Djurdjević’s acrylic painting, Synchronized Swimming, explores traditional female roles in Serbia and provides insight into the circumstances surrounding the process of growing up in a patriarchal social order. Austrian artist Johanna Kandl supplies an outside perspective of Serbia with three pieces that play with language and everyday scenes. These are just five of the twenty-six or so works that were on display in Serbia - Frequently Asked Questions. They are exemplary of the various approaches taken in creatively confronting the past and the future of one of the edgiest, most exciting countries in present-day Europe.
Artists: Biljana DJURDJEVIĆ, Uroš DJURIĆ, Vlatka HORVAT, Johanna KANDL, KUNSTHISTORISCHES MAUSOLEUM, Paul Albert LEITNER, Marko LULIĆ, Ahmet ÖĞÜT, Marko PELJHAN, Dan PERJOVSCHI, Darinka POP-MITIĆ, Anri SALA, Walter STEINACHER, Zoran TODOROVIĆ, Raša TODOSIJEVIĆ, Milica TOMIĆ, Stefanos TSIVOPOULOS, Katarina ZDJELAR
Produced by Andreas Stadler
Curators: Branislav Dimitrijević & Andreas Stadler
An official EUNIC project (European Union National Institutes for Culture).
Detailed information on the exhibition, press images of the works and the curators' statement is available on the Serbia – Frequently Asked Questions press page.
