A ground-breaking project curated by award winning artist Breda Beban, bringing together Serbian and Croatian artists.
Breda Beban fled Zagreb in 1991 and currently lives and works in London & Sheffield. Starting from her own intimate knowledge of the political and cultural history of her former homeland, Beban has returned to select work by artists from both sides of the divide. Unable herself to deal with the antagonisms created by the recent unrest and the situation faced now by the two nationalities, the selection of work from Zagreb and Belgrade, expresses her own personal reflection on this emotional and turbulent territory.
“While talking to artists, looking at their work, travelling between places I rediscovered a territory of extreme contradictions and subtle ambiguities. Over there one can exist inside the West and outside of it; one can experience in full the complexity and the fragility of our cultures… I realised that in my vocabulary there is only one name for a place like this the Balkans. Balkan is not an easy word… geopolitically and culturally the Balkans are almost impossible to define. Less something made then something forever in making, the Balkans can be what one desires it to be.” Breda Beban.
Artists include: Tanja Dabo, photography and performance; Vladimir Martek, photography; Zoran Naskovski, video installation; Vladimir Nikolic, video installation; Miladen Stilinovic, photography; Dragana Zarevac, video and Igor Grubic.