HANA MILETIĆ
SINT-ANNABOS – FOREST SAINTE-ANNE
2.10. – 13.10.2013.
Opening of the exhibition on October 2nd 2013 at 7 pm.

HR

PM GALLERY
Trg žrtava fašizma 16
10000 Zagreb

Working hours
Wednesday  – Friday 11 am – 7 pm
Saturday and Sunday 10 am – 6 pm
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays.

In this series, Hana Miletić explores and documents the “Sint-Annabos” (“Forest-Sainte-Anne”), a small forest close to the city of Antwerp in Belgium that is threatened by the construction of a highway bridge. Miletić has photographed the trees of the forest in an isolated, individuated way, capturing their shapes in the midst of the night, as if she wanted to make a kind of clandestine portrait of each one of them.

The photographs are printed using the Fresson-technique, a carbon printing technique that was used in the early days of photography. The process involves natural carbon extracted from burned organic material that is deposited on the paper in order to render the picture. Miletić’ photographs of the Forest-Sainte-Anne thus suggest, in a way, a potential for re-incarnation of the trees threatened by abolition. Moreover, the dramatic effect of the Fresson printing technique grants a deep and dark image quality, creating an almost mystical atmosphere inhabiting the photographs.

The selection of photographs presented here does not only document the trees of the Forest-Sainte-Anne in a typological fashion, it also attempts to reinstall a sense of mystery and uncanniness in the experience of the European forest at large: the photographs remind the fact that once, long before modernity disenchanted the forest as a place of leisure and recreation, it was considered an impenetrable place inhabited by wolfs, witches and burglars.

Along with this project of re-enchantment, Miletić also exhibits remnants of the protests by the environmental NGO Ademloos (Breathless) who protests against the destruction of the forest. Their banners and slogans become thus not only politically concerned cries for environmental awareness, but are transformed in objects that call for the preservation and cultivation of zones of secrecy and danger in Europe’s engineered, suburban landscape.

Gawan Fagard