Serbian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
<http://eng.msub.org.rs/serbian-pavilion-at-56th-la-biennale-di-venezia>
Ivan Grubanov, United Dead Nations (detail), 2015. Installation, mixed media,
50 x 2520 x 790cm. Courtesy of the artist and Loock Gallery.
Ivan Grubanov: United Dead Nations
9 May–22 November 2015
Preview: 6–8 May
Opening: 7 May, 13h
Pavilion of the Republic of Serbia
Giardini della Biennale
Venice
www.msub.org.rs
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The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia and the Foundation of the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade are pleased to announce that Ivan
Grubanov, as the artist, and Lidija Merenik, as the curator and commissioner,
are presenting the Pavilion of the Republic of Serbia at the 56th Venice
Biennale with the project United Dead Nations. The official opening will take
place on May 7 at 13h at the Pavilion of the Republic of Serbia in the Giardini
della Biennale, Venice.
United Dead Nations is a project of memory in times of post-history. Its locus
is chosen to be the former Yugoslav, now Serbian Pavilion—seen from the venue's
own historical perspective of national and state order, political movements and
crises experienced from the time of the Pavilion's foundation at the Venice
Biennale in 1938 until today. Through a floor installation, the artist Ivan
Grubanov will examine ideological, political and cultural terms of
"nation/state/state of nations," and the process of their creation, rule and
disappearance. This process is symbolically represented through various
ritualistic and artistic interventions made on flags of countries, which have,
due to political upheavals, stopped existing as such since the founding of the
Venice Biennale in 1895: the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867–1918), the Ottoman
Empire (1299–1922), Gran Colombia (1819–1930), Tibet (1913–51), United Arab
Republic (1958–71), South Vietnam (1955–75), German Democratic Republic
(1949–90), USSR (1922–91), Czechoslovakia (1918–92) and Yugoslavia (1918–2003).
The project's title United Dead Nations introduces a pun on the UN
organization's title on associative and poetic levels, but also a connection
with the historical and cultural paradigm of the Venice Biennale, a unique
gathering of "united artistic nations." One of the achievements of the Biennale
has been (or was) to bring together contemporary art and the national-state
representation through organizing national pavilions and presentations, thus
appearing as a microcosm of the unbreakable bond between art and the politics
of a bygone era of the Modern. By deconstructing the concept of national-state
representation, one might instigate a discourse on the meaning of the term
"nation" in post-global age, when the national state retreats before the
trans-national and supra-national forms of organizing—conglomerates, political,
military and economic alliances which represent huge concentrations of power
and influence.
Ivan Grubanov (b. 1976 in Belgrade) received education at the Painting
Department of the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts, the Rijksakademie van
beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, Delfina Studios in London, Casa de Velazquez in
Madrid and University of Leuven – KU Leuven. Grubanov's ideas and his work
achieve independence over political speech through artistic and critical
interpretation of historical memory, and thus evade the unwanted banalization
of artistic speech. They negate the concept of the work of art as a closed,
static aesthetic object, while maintaining the identity of an autochthonous
analytical and critical post-painterly practice of the open system of
interpretation. With the series of drawings Visitor (2002–04), made during the
Slobodan Milošević's trial at the International Court of Justice in the Hague,
he made a break-through on the international art scene. His work has been
exhibited in numerous solo, group, and biennial exhibitions worldwide since
1997 (Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, the 10th Istanbul
Biennial, Witte the With in Rotterdam, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and many
more), as well as awarded by several artistic and scholarly awards.
Lidija Merenik is Professor at the Art History Department, Faculty of
Philosophy, University of Belgrade.
Contact
Serbian Press: Ana Bogdanovic, [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
International Press: Claudia Zini, [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
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