MG+MSUM

TRAVELING EXHIBITION | Bigger than Me. Heroic Voices from Ex-Yugoslavia
05 May 2021 — 12 September 2021
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MAXXI, Rome, Bigger than Myself exhibition with posters by Igor Grubić, Angels with Dirty Faces portraits (2004-2006). Courtesy MAXXXI, Rome

 

Bigger than Myself. Heroic Voices from Ex-Yugoslavia

5 May – 12 September 2021

Curator: Zdenka Badovinac

Associate curator: Giulia Ferracci

www.maxxi.art

 

The exhibition is on view at the National Museum of 21st Century Art MAXXI in Rome, Italy. 

 

There are nine unusual angels overlooking the long glass pane of MAXXI’s Galleria 3. Suspended over the forecourt they seem to be guarding the museum Portrayed in large-scale photographs, they are seated, wearing work overalls, their faces covered in soot, two white wings painted behind them on the sheet metal from industrial warehouses. They are Angels with Dirty Faces, the protagonists of the photography series by Igor Grubić portraying the miners of the Kolubara coal basin in Serbia. Their miners’ strike in 2000, which brought together thousands of people, marked the beginning of the downfall of the Milošević regime.

 

Unsung heroes, but human beings capable of influencing the course of political events and history: it is to them, to these civil heroes who often remain invisible and silent, to solidarity, and to the great ideals that today more than ever before are needed, that this exhibition is dedicated: “Bigger than Myself. Heroic Voices from Ex-Yugoslavia” curated by Zdenka Badovinac with Giulia Ferracci, to be held in Galleria 3 at the MAXXI the National Museum of 21st Century Arts from May 5 to September 12, 2021.

 

A composite and complex mosaic of almost one hundred works by over sixty artists from the former Yugoslav countries that tells not just the difficult story of a territory traversed over the centuries by wars, conflicts, and instability, but also describes the utopistic of a country – Socialist Yugoslavia – initially built on the idea of brotherhood between nations and unity among workers.

 

From the days of World War II to the drama of civil wars, from the processes of independence until more recent years, these artists come to terms with their history, reinterpreted through the gestures of those heroes who, in different ways and at different times, sacrificed their lives for others in the name of a higher ideal, “greater than them,” as the title of the exhibition tells us.

 

But the exhibition is more about the present than about the past, It speaks about our time of globalization, consumerism,  power based on new technology, environmental and refugees’ crisis. We live in times that are increasingly dominated by cynicism, by fear of the other, by consumerism, and by the dramatic consequences of a model of a hypercompetitive society that is increasingly individualistic, the exhibition “Più grande di me” aims to bear a message of peace, liberty, equality, brotherhood, and sustainability.

 

As Giovanna Melandri, President of Fondazione MAXXIsays: "For many years, MAXXI has explored the artistic ferment that has grown behind the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern horizon, in areas where the historical wounds are yet to heal. It is the common thread of our research, a tool of “cultural diplomacy” that aims to offer, through the knowledge and dissemination of art, a possible reinterpretation of the past and a light with which to explore the future. This exhibition describes the artistic scene of a territory, shaken over the centuries by multiple upheavals. The voices and sensitivity of the artists exhibited here explore the deep entanglement between nationalisms and the torsions of extractive capitalism; they tell of another vision concerning the person and the community. Upon closer examination, they evoke a different, social, sustainable Europe, in which identities and cultures can coexist and enrich one another. Perhaps this is the challenge we should all be engaged in.”

 

Hou Hanru, MAXXI’s Artistic Director, stated: “This project is a new step of MAXXI’s continuous research focus on the interactions between Italy and the Mediterranean region, bringing further the manifestation of the dynamics that constantly form and reform the artistic cultural, and geopolitical space of what we call Europe, a mutating region that is key to restructuring of the globalized world”.

 

Zdenka Badovinac says: “For this exhibition, I conceived the concept that describes two forces that are “bigger than myself,” which means bigger than us, individuals. One is an idea, a value, for which one would be willing to die. It refers to heroism, to the question: “what are relevant heroic gestures today?” The other is about the global capital, a total power that dominates everything today.

 

It is true that the exhibition speaks primarily of this duality hidden in its title, the duality between the ideal and the pragmatic, but at the same time, it overcomes this duality by bringing into its narrative the third element. It should be emphasized here that both aspects, idealistic and pragmatic, are explicitly human. However, this is only apparently so, as the third force, a non-human voice, the voice of nature, is present throughout the exhibition”.

 

THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition comprises eight sections that are not separate, but rather connected together just as are the themes they examine. The first four (Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood, Hope), distinguished in the exhibition by the color blue, represent and describe heroic deeds, revolutions, and positive values, ideals for which in the past people were willing to fight and even give up their lives for, but the contradictions of socialism that nourished that values and the interventions of global capital, by contrast, have triggered the profound crisis of the same values and ideals in today’s society.

 

The four remaining sections (Risk, An Individual, Alienness, Metamorphoses), characterized by the color red, instead describe today’s world and the most urgent issues of contemporary life, the consequences of the voracity of our times, in which human beings are increasingly less in harmony with themselves, others, and nature.

 

The heart of the exhibition, a core that is not just ideal but spatial as well, is the first section titled FREEDOM. At the entrance, as the visitor climbs the stairs to Galleria 1, they find themselves before a monumental cloth collage made by the artist Siniša Ilić titled Orientation in 100 Revolutions (2017).

 

To the left, arranged along the gallery wall so that they resemble a nineteenth-century painting gallery are over eighty paintings. These are the portraits of partisans of different ethnicities, civil heroes who are both known and unknown to history, original works made during the short era of Socialist Realism, preserved for years in the warehouses of the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and assembled and by the collective IRWIN (Was is Kunst Bosnia and Herzegovina - Heroes 1941 - 45). 

 

A very long line “interrupted” midway by the faces of contemporary and heroes from the past – women, men, even animals – who mark the days of the calendar created by Djorge Balmazović (Calendar). Included among them is the figure of Giovanni Falcone.

 

The theme of EQUALITY explores women’s liberation starting from the crucial role played by women in the liberation front during WW2 and the reconstruction of the country. Like the work GEN XX (1997 – 2001) by Sanja Iveković, who impresses upon the advertising images of top models the names of the partisan heroines who tragically lost their lives. Forgotten stories or ones never told, such as that of Didara Gjorgjević, illustrated by Darinka Pop-Mitić in the large wall painting made thanks to the collaboration of the Triennio in Pittura e Arti Visive (Third-Year in Painting and Visual Arts) of NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (New Academy of Fine Arts).

 

There is another struggle brought forward by women, and it is that of the freedom and liberation of the woman’s body. Champions of this struggle are the most celebrated performance artist ever, Marina Abramovic, who performs one of her most famous and engaging works, Rhythm 0,  as well as the renowned Croatian performer Vlasta Delimar, naked and majestic on horseback as she rides through the streets of Zagreb in the blow-up photo Lady Godiva.

 

The section titled BROTHERHOOD explores the solidarity between workers, such as in the work of Igor Grubić mentioned before. However, it is also an opportunity to denounce by contrast the conditions of exploitation and the lack of security on the job.

 

The sculptures of Durantina Kastrati offer a shocking warning: the limbs of mutilated bodies are exposed on mobile scaffolding, the result of the artist’s research into a series of tragic work-related accidents that took place in Kosovo.

 

Lastly, the dignity of work is symbolized by the golden altarpiece by Danica Dakić Sirotanovićka (2019), named after the miner Alija Sirotanović, a “work hero” of Socialist Yugoslavia.

 

The section HOPE explores the architectural and urban planning of the former Yugoslavia. Starting from Socialist Modernism, linked to the idea of progress and a better life for all, told by Anja Medved in Town In A Meadow (2004), documenting the birth of the city of Nova Gorica (1948). Or by Yane Čalovski, who in Construction of an Archive (2017 – ongoing) describes the loss of the archive of what was formerly the Institute of Urban Planning and Architecture in Skopje. However, art and architecture can also be the loudspeakers of political rhetoric. This is explored by Jasmina Cibic in the film NADA: Act II, which brings back to the stage the pantomime ballet by Béla Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin (1918–1919), performed in the Yugoslavia Pavilion at the 1958 EXPO in Brussels.

 

The chapter entitled RISK deals with all the currents that today are considered a “necessary evil” for the construction and achievement of a better life, from the excesses of consumerism to the risks of privacy linked to the spread of digitization, and the at times devastating consequences.

 

Here, Andrej Škufca presents Synthetic zero (2019), a large-scale sculpture inspired by contemporary technology and power globalization. Encrypted digital communication is the object of the work We Should Take Nothing For Granted (2014) by Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman, a project that was begun during a residence in the United States when the datagate triggered by Edward Snowden’s revelations was in the news.

 

Another main theme in this section is the reflection on the most extreme forms of automated work, visible in the piece Monomat/Mon-O-Matic (2015) by Lenka Djorojević e Matej Stupica, the prototype of an automation control center.

 

The monumental video work Time Travel (2019) by Vladimir Nikolić identifies the section AN INDIVIDUAL: a single swimmer viewed from above swims back and forth in an Olympic-sized pool. He is in a race against himself, marked by the rhythm of the strokes of his arms, the perfect visual metaphor for individualism in contemporary society, where often it is the success of the individual that prevails.

 

Also alone is Superman, the object of performance (1984) by Tomislav Gotovac, in which the artist dons the clothing of the famous superhero and in the exhibition is offset by the crowded wall of portraits by the IRWIN collective. Lastly, the harsh consequences of the “logic of the strongest” are summed up by Mustafa-Karllo in Hard Working (2017), which presents a person who lies covered on the ground and holds a small house made of snuff, the only one he is able to build himself.

 

Migration, the fear of the other, the drama of being displaced are the focus of the section ALIENNESS. Here we find works like Family Album (2019) by Alban Muja, a film that lends its voice to the dramatic personal stories of the displaced people of Kosovo. The facts of the Balkan Route, the lives blocked in limbo outside the gates to Europe, the attempt, and the everyday failures to cross the border are told by Nika Autor in a multi-channel installation titled Newsreel 65 (2021). Fortunately, there is also a ray of hope: in the work Integration, Illegal people project (2017) Zoran Todorović offers a virtuous example of integration in a reception center in Belgrade.

 

The section titled METAMORPHOSES, an in-depth analysis of our relation to nature that goes beyond anthropocentrism, ideally opens and ends the exhibition. Part of this reflection is the birch trees that line the access ramp to the exhibition (What Would Happen if We Succeed? by Nada Prjilia) whose survival is up to the visitor.

 

Also explored is the connection with non-human beings, a topic that is of crucial importance today, when the entire world is in the throes of a pandemic. Here we find, for example, such an important representative of post humanistic art as Maja Smrekar, who exhibits the work of a hybrid family, which speaks of the fact that we can no longer think of the community only as a human community. This idea is the focus of Joze Barsi’s reflection in Plečnik's Stadium (2020), a work that illustrates the history of the Central Stadium in Ljubljana. The object of recent debate on its use, the stadium now harbors a large variety of wild plants whose particular beauty and deep meaning are captured by this artist.

 

Photo © Musacchio, Ianniello & Pasqualini, courtesy Fondazione MAXXI