Exposures / Izlozenosti

Another post from the National Gallery. I wanted to share two more projects that were displayed alongside Football: Metaphor for life.

Boris Glamocanin and Sandra Dukic created a powerful work about a former mining town, Ljubija. Ljubija was a prosperous town with a booming industrial economy; now it’s a marginalized refugee centre with almost total unemployment. Their project is called “Ljubija ubija“, which means literally “Ljubija kills”, reflecting the tough conditions of life there, but in slang can also mean “Ljubija’s killing it!” or “Ljubija rulz!” They used the symbol of Ljubija’s coat of arms (also the logo of the mine, now closed), and combined it with knitted masks and muffs, made by women of Ljubija, that symbolize the way that society now ignores Ljubija’s citizens. (Masks and muffs were sold and proceeds donated to Ljubija citizens.) Foundries in Ljubija used to produce man hole covers; a man hole cover is turned into an audio installation where we can hear artists’ experiences in Ljubija, their stereotypes about its poverty and violence. (The mine was used as an execution site in the last war; a huge mass grave was found in October 2013 in nearby Tomasica, currently being exacavated.)

Vahida Ramujkic created a Disputed Histories library, which captures the conflict over interpretations of history through a nationalist lens. Students in different schools with different textbooks learn different “histories”… What are the histories that we tell?