On Normality: Art in Serbia 1989–2001 – Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade

May 6 – June 7, 2009

American University Museum - Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave, Washington, D.C. 20016

Curator: Dejan Sretenović

Artists: Milan Aleksić, Association Apsolutno, Biljana Djurdjević, Uroš Djurić, Adrian Kovats, Zoran Marinković, Goranka Matić, Era Milivojević, Zoran Naskovski, Vladimir Nikolić, Tanja Ostojić, Vesna Pavlović, Neša Paripović, Talent, Milica Tomić, Zoran Todorović, Raša Todosijević, Balint Szombathy

In summer 1989, the last big exhibition of Yugoslav contemporary art, called Yugoslav Documenta, was held in Sarajevo. Simultaneously, Slobodan Milošević rallied masses of his supporters to march to Kosovo in order to commemorate the medieval Kosovo battle and to inaugurate himself as the new leader of the Serbian nation. That year, the new era began, the era of war, ethnic cleansing, economic sanctions and an overall decline in all aspects of everyday life in the country that was once called Yugoslavia. Two parallel worlds were created – the dominating world of nationalist ideology and the marginalized world of opponents to this political hegemony, as was manifested both in political and cultural fields.

Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade organized this exhibition of visual artists who worked in Serbia in this period in order to throw new light onto these troubled and controversial times. The exhibition shows artistic projects which directly or indirectly reflect political, economical, cultural and everyday climate in the country, and the position on the crossroads between longing to participate in the international artistic currents and keeping local specificities, between direct political engagement and disillusioned escapism, between the tragic and the humorous, between modest and pretensions, between theoretical and intuitive, between participation and isolation. Many of the artists participating in the exhibition have already been known on the international scene (Raša Todosijević, Milica Tomić, Škart, Biljana Djurdjević and others) and some have never had their works shown outside the country.

During the 1990s, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade was effectively closed for ambitious contemporary art and became a passive tool of nationalist ideology. It could be argued that all relevant art production during the 90s in Serbia was non-institutional. It is with this exhibition that most of the works from this period are for the first time shown in a “high-profile” institutional context and placed as new acquisitions in the Museum’s collection.

This exhibition marks a sense of urgency to re-think the position of free artistic practices in hostile ideological circumstances, and to critically re-evaluate a general climate of disillusionment and (in)ability to face responsibility for atrocious events that brought the whole region to disaster and Serbia in particular to its regretful image internationally. It is not the intention of this show to give a face-lift to this image, but to open up the whole context in which artistic and political issues intermingled, to offer a case-study in which remarkable works of art reflect troubled and turbulent collective/personal attitudes and forms.