Jovana Popić

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO FORGET?

Jan 25 – Feb 5, 2017

Bačva Gallery

 

The exhibition opens on Wednesday, January 25, 2017 at 7.00 PM

The art project What do you want to forget? was created to mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Jan 27, 2017) and it will premiere with the exhibition in Bačva Gallery. The monumental audio-visual installation is then scheduled for display at the renowned art fair Art Basel 2017, as part of the Sennheiser Future Audio Artist Award.

What do you want to forget? revolves around the issue of memory. It employs art as a memory technique in its exploration of the “intermediate spaces” between remembrance and forgetting, at the individual and collective level and through time dimensions of past and future.

The installation consists of five enlarged interpretations of the human vertebra, which indicate a giant human body, as the symbol of the most direct carrier of identity. The singular, individual and subjective body meets the collective “body” of the community at the intersection between the visual and acoustical dimension of the work: each vertebra contains an invisible loudspeaker, which transmits personal testimonies of the victims (or descendants of the victims) of the Holocaust, from three main cities of former Yugoslavia. The acoustic installation associatively integrates its observer into a dialogue and triggers his or her reflections about specific contents of the memory, as part of a more complex aesthetic experience.

Relying on the works of Assman and Foucault, this project reflects on the process of forgetting as a part of a strong social and political strategy in the formation of individual and collective memory. This is one of the crucial issues within the context of the historical narratives regarding the Second World War and the 1990’s wars.

Jovana Popić was born in 1977 in Zadar. The multimedia artist started her education at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and proceeded to enroll in the class of Prof. Rebecca Horn at the Berlin University of Arts, where she was awarded as Meisterschülerpreis des Präsidenten for her master’s thesis. Her other awards include the Sennheiser Future Audio Artist Program, Codice Mia 2016, Ulrich und Burga Knispel Preis, the stipends by Karl Hofer Gesellschaft and Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, the stipend by the Kingdom of Norway and a number of artist’s residencies. She exhibited in Germany, USA, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Japan, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Serbia and Croatia. Jovana Popić lives and works in Berlin.

The exhibition was organized with the financial support of the City of Zagreb’s Office for Education, Culture and Sports.