Description:
The project Big Slovenia explores the visual appearance of Slovenian territory on the maps of Europe and the world. Based on initial findings, the Republic of Slovenia is very decorative.
Exhibitions:
- 05.10.2004 – 24.10.2004 P74 Gallery, Ljubljana
- 20.12.2004 – 28.02.2005 Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana
This is a collaborative project I did with Vuk Ćosić, which explores the very different ways Slovenia is depicted on European and World maps.
Execution:
16 high quality photo prints (each 50cm x 50cm)
Thoughts:
Working on this project was an interesting experience for a number of reasons. First of all, our backgrounds are not as similar as they appear. We’ve both worked in the internet industry, but while Vuk works mostly with ideas and concepts, my work has been of much more technical nature. Also, we have very different approaches. While Vuk stresses simplicity and directness, I enjoy doing things in a more complex way, a deformity I developed so I could keep myself interested in the tons of similar commercial projects I had been doing over the years. I guess we met halfway on this project. Another peculiarity is the static and non-interactive nature of the presentation, which one could describe as post-net-art.
We never really talked about the concept because it’s so simple and self-explanatory, we just agreed it’s very amusing.
However, here are some of my own thoughts which relate to it:
The 16 images deal on one hand with the fact that newer (Eastern) European countries are relatively unknown and easily confused by foreigners, and on the other hand with Slovenia’s preocupation with national borders, national identity and the absence of a unifying vision with which to present itself to the World. Thus, it is depicted as an ameboid shape, rendered unrecognizable on maps with a regular scale. In a way, without the historical and geographical context that defines it, it becomes unimportant and is engulfed by the larger stuctures towards which it is running.
The opening in the P74 Gallery was attended by a great number of personal friends and fellow artists. With over 60 guests, it was quite a success if you take into account that the gallery is situated in Šentvid, which is quite far from the center (at least by our standards), that there was a journalist strike at the same time (so the exhibition got hardly any coverage), and that most of the guests found out about the exhibition by word of mouth and following our heavy phone/SMS/email campaign a couple of hours before the opening. As an additional joke, we served freshly made pizza-burek, the indigenous Slovenian fusion dish.
In December 2004, the piece was selected by the curators of the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana to appear in the mega-exhibition called 7 grehov: Ljubljana – Moskva / 7 Sins: Ljubljana – Moscow, featuring over 100 Eastern European artists. We are featured in the room of Cynicism.
Tags: exhibition