Migration(s) (and) Intentity(es)
ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana
03 – 06 December 2015
We present the works of artists of the younger generation who work in Slovenia and address borderline concepts in both genre and content. In addition to a performance, the authors present themselves with a (video) installation and drawings, where the ephemeral character of the performative meets constructive (self-) reflection as a collage of engaged and innovative visual-performative projects (not only in conceptual but also in technological and research terms), especially as a de- and re-construction of already established artistic practices and the tendency, search and desire for something new – connecting, creating, thinking and acting.
WORKS:
A. Knezović: KNOW YOURSELF BEFORE YOU LET GO (2015)
“I am this space my body believes in.” (Yusef Komunyakaa)
Know Yourself Before You Let Go is a project that deals with individuals internal borders and re-definitions of personal constructs. It is based on two fragments, each representing different stages of the process. In the video performance artist is experiencing limits between illusions of the mind and the abilities of the body. The artist holds a half-full glass in her outstretched hand until it becomes agonizingly painful; when the unbearable moment reaches its peak, artist tries to put the glass back on the nearby table without dropping it. In first couple of times the performer overrates its body ability of endurance regarding such task, which lead to insufficient completion of the task. Through a repetition of an exercise, performer gains more understanding and connection between her body and the goals that she projected in her mind, becoming more balanced in exercising the task. Artist’s primary goal by now is to equilibrate her motoric function and idea of limits that she can endure. The process repeats until artist completes the task. This piece questions the idea of personal capability to assess our own limits; how we deal with our own impression of what we can do and what is a mere overrated competence. Project recreates personal rites of passages that follow the transformation of one’s perception of self. It also deals with the concept of liminal space, the space where thresholds become visible. Liminal space is a state of transformation, from separation to incorporation, the ‘in-between’ concept is a state where anything can happen and outcomes are unpredictable.
Author: Andrea Knezović;
Video: Toma Zidić;
Partners: Vertigo, A.V.A. – Academy for visual arts, ŠKUC, Projekt Atol
Andrea Knezović: ON THE THRESHOLD (2014)
(Project developed within Aksioma’s U30 Initiative )
“Even if one is not an actual immigrant or expatriate, it is still possible to think as one, to imagine and investigate in spite of barriers, and always to move away from the centralizing authorities towards the margins, where you see things that are usually lost on minds that have never traveled beyond the conventional and the comfortable.” Edward W. Said, in Ranjan Ghosh (ed.), Edward Said and the Literary, Social, and Political World (2009).
On the Threshold is a multimedia project, which explores this intimate condition of globalized individuals through immigrants’ confessions. The projections create an aesthetic landscape, related to the identity of migrants. The sound is composed of three layers: the immigrants’ confessions in English, in their mother tongue, and in abstract sound, which the interviewees associate with immigration. The sound serves as a constant determinant, which dictates the feeling and the atmosphere of the project On the Threshold. Through the media of sound and video, Knezović first deconstructs the interviewed subjects and then reconstructs them in a lucid narration of this abstract condition, in which change is, in fact, the only constant.
Author: Andrea Knezović
Text: Miha Turk
Olja Grubić: TO THE LAST DROP (2015)
(produced by VN Lab 2015, coproduction partners: Projekt Atol, Društvo ŠKUC)
Drinking is one of the most widespread and universal ways in which we express and socialize a wide range of emotions from joy to sadness, from hope to despair, from defeat to triumph … In fact, there is no reason that would not be appropriate for drinking.
Lana Zdravković drinks on rights and freedoms that we have ensured in the Constitution. Olja Grubić drinks on her right to freely decide on the birth of a child. Nika Rozman drinks on all hardworking, caring, faithful and loving mothers, wives and housewives. Plenty of reasons to drink…
Author: Olja Grubić
Mentor: Bojan Jablanovec
O. Grubić: No title, performans, part of the Phantom of Identity happening(2014)
(a KITCH production)
In her performance, Olja Grubić exhibits and composes her identity, faces life problems and tries to find a simpler way of life. Every mistake is a trigger that moves her a step forward and gives her new opportunities, gives her space to explore and be creative, and problems are no longer problems if we know how to face them, accept them and transform them.
Author: Olja Grubić
Concept and moderation: KITCH (Nenad Jelesijević, Lana Zdravković)
Mentor: Bojan Jablanovec
A. V. A. – Academy of Visual Arts (Ljubljana)
AVA- Academy of Visual Arts holds advanced study programs of contemporary visual creative practices that keep pace with European and global trends and provide students with a solid foundation for practical creative processes, history and theory of visual arts, with emphasis on experimentation, research, problem solving and interdisciplinary cooperation based on global information and awareness. As part of the exhibition “Migration (and Identity (s)”, they present works by two of their students, Nina Oblak and Denis Šehić.
Colophon
Migration(s) (and) Identity(es), 2015
group exhibition
Production: Zavod Projekt Atol
Coproduction: Društvo ŠKUC, A. V. A. – Akademija za vizualne umetnosti
Partners: Via Negativa, KITCH, Aksioma, Vertigo
The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture and City of Ljubljana.
Bios
Andrea Knezović (1990) is a visual artist and researcher, with a Masters’s degree in Artistic Research from the University of Amsterdam (2019) and a B.A. (Hons) in Visual Arts from A.V.A-Academy of Visual Arts, Ljubljana (2014). Currently based between Amsterdam, Ljubljana and Zagreb, Knezović is an artist who explores threshold states and ambiguities within social contexts. She uses her creative process as an instrument for reconstructing social paradigms involving identity-politics and examining liminal occurrences inside the contemporary neoliberal ritualizations. Knezović’s works bear strong political references and are characterized by the use of everyday objects, with references to the social structuring, instrumentalization of intimacy, and currencies of value in a contemporary setting.
Andrea KnezovićVisual artist and performer Olja Grubić was born in Pula (1990), where she finished high school, then later graduated in Space Conceptualization from the Academy of Visual Arts in Ljubljana. She works with various media: drawings, installations, video, photography, performance and cabaret, focusing on modern and socially engaged topics. Her work reflects a broad spectrum of feelings and the social conditions of society today.
As of 2014, she is a member of the Croatian Association of Artists (HDLU) in Istria, exhibiting and performing in Croatia and Slovenia.
She has worked with various artists: La Pocha Nostra, Julia Bardsley, Ursula Martinez, Kate Mcintosh, Janez Janša, Bojan Jablanovec – Via Negativa.
Denis Šehić, a graduate of the Academy of Visual Arts – AVA, works in visual arts, poetry, prose and theater. He has participated in a number of group exhibitions over the last five years and is the author and director of the play Birds at the GLEJ Theater, 2014. His installation Lullaby for Sophia is an allusion to Sophia, the name of a military operation to protect the EU’s external borders. The operation, however, is named after a girl born on one of these smuggling ships, and evokes feelings of insecurity and reminds us how unprepared we are for the current situation and how senseless is our attitude to the tragedy we are watching from the armchairs in our living rooms.
