The Politics of Memory, Power, and Resistance
A selection of works from Moderna galerija’s Arteast 2000+ and national collections plus special projects
The thematic exhibition series, jointly titled (Un)Equal Geographies, aims to establish a dialogue between works from Moderna galerija’s Arteast 2000+ and national collections on the one hand, and works by contemporary artists, from various institutional collections, and archival materials on the other. This will encourage diverse, parallel and multiple readings of history, placing local knowledge within a broader context, especially in the part of the world called the East, which has always been considered a space of unequal geographies in comparison to the West. Housed in the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, the Arteast 2000+ collection focuses on exactly this space: during the Cold War, the art of Eastern Europe was seen as lagging behind the Western art canon. Deriving from Western thinking, this view overlooked the fact that the differences were not merely a question of artistic styles and canons, but rather related to the art system(s), the production conditions, and the accessibility of official (art) histories. In the late 1990s, Moderna galerija was one of the first art institutions in the world to establish a new model of work based on locally contextualized narratives and histories, with the Arteast 2000+ collection playing a crucial role in this. Arteast 2000+ juxtaposed Eastern European artistic practices with those from other parts of the world, putting them on the global art map on equal terms. Rather than merely aesthetic, the change was also political and social. As Bertolt Brecht put it: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” In this view, art does not simply reflect the world; it actively shapes social realities, bringing to light suppressed or ignored inequalities and offering new perspectives.
This year’s display also symbolically commemorates the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with Marij Pregelj’s drawing for his 1947 fresco Liberation.
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Over the last thirty years, the monuments to the National Liberation Struggle, built as symbols of antifascist resistance and as an expression of the collective memory of the Partisan struggle, have become focal points for debates about nationalism, history, and culture. Once central to Yugoslav identity, these monuments have now also become symbols of division, representing the contested spaces of post-war Yugoslavia’s fragmented political and cultural landscapes. They can thus serve as an example of how art can turn into a political tool with different meanings and interpretations in different historical periods. Artists address the (actual and alternative) roles and fates of monuments through diverse conceptual and formal approaches. They explore how geography and political power influence the way history is constructed, memorialized, and subverted.
Forming part of this section is Sam Durant’s project Monuments, Plans, Utopias, consisting of the Iconoclasm series of drawings installed in public spaces and the Proposals for Monuments installation, which includes a selection of plans (sketches, drawings, photographs, models, and posters) for monuments to the National Liberation Struggle by artists Stojan Batič, Janez Lenassi, Marko Pogačnik, Marij Pregelj, Jakob Savinšek, and Drago Tršar.
Complementing Durant’s project is a selection of works from Moderna galerija’s national collections ranging from traditional “monuments” to workers from the 1940s to anti-monuments that challenge monumentality, thereby also undermining or even subverting their ideological function. The artists presented here are Sanja Iveković, Siniša Labrović, Laibach Kunst, Slavko Smolej, and Mladen Stilinović. Part of this display is a collaborative project by Fokus grupa and Gal Kirn entitled Writing/Erasing: Monument Politics in Post-socialist Times and based on an open call for contributions that seeks to map and analyze instances of political revisionism manifested in public spaces through the construction and destruction of monuments.
Also on the first floor of the museum is the exhibition Weaving Worlds: Collections in Conversation, a result of a dialogue between specific collections – the Solidarity Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje and the Arteast 2000+ collection, as well as the national collections of Moderna galerija, Ljubljana – highlighting only works that are made of natural materials, in addition to works that reflect the artists’ engagement with nature. Weaving Worlds: Collections in Conversation (the first of two complementary exhibitions uncovering the potential for weaving new worlds and offering critical-philosophical approach to the collections themselves) focuses on the emancipation of media, exploring the relationship between culture and nature, while critically addressing the pressing environmental issues of the time of the Capitalocene. This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje and curated by Ivana Vaseva, Blagoja Varoshanec, Iva Dimovski, Vladimir Janchevski and Bojana Piškur.
The works installed on the ground floor of the museum revolve around the subjects of the war in Yugoslavia, the transition to capitalism, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the end of the idea of Eastern Europe as a “socialist project.” The themes addressed are those of social hierarchies and power relations, the state, identity and language, community and direct reactions to reality, as well as critiques of the past and doubts about the future. In the context of unequal geographies, these works examine the ways in which certain histories are privileged or marginalized. Artists from Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia grapple with the erasure or distortion of their historical experiences in global discourses. The artists presented on the ground floor are Jusuf Hadžifejzović, Igor Grubić, Vlado Martek, Darinka Pop - Mitić, Dan Perjovschi, Tone Stojko, Bálint Szombathy, Škart, Jane Štravs, Slaven Tolj, and Konstantin Zvezdochotov.
Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.
Partners of the thematic exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro; Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje; Salt, Istanbul & Lumbardhi Foundation, Prizren.
