SINIŠA ILIć
Solo exhibition curated by Ivana Marjanović, director of Kunstraum Innsbruck
By visualizing a possible memory of 100 revolutions that suggests orientation in times of disorientation and the impossibility of drawing stable geo-political borders in a continuously changing world, Siniša Ilić’s art work traces the fragile conditions of our life. Images of working people intertwine with landscapes of control and political turmoil. The current health crisis is added to a long history of historic changes: from the October Revolution and the Non-Aligned Movement to the artist’s observations on survival in a neoliberal capitalist world based on class hierarchies, racist exclusions, and exploitation.
The exhibition Un_controlled Territories presents a selection of Ilić’s recent art productions. Using diverse media, small scale drawings, large temporary wall paintings, video works, prints, and collages, Siniša Ilić creates a visual language for a research of past, current, and imaginary political developments and movements with an interest in a different future.
Ilić’s intervention in old images of Alpine regions and Western/Central European cities transforms historical touristic marketing campaigns into images that reveal what commercial advertising often hides: turbulent histories, landscapes of rebellions, ghosts from the past. Regulated and monetarized nature with its tourist infrastructure becomes the imaginary scenography of tensions.
Ilić’s aesthetics oscillate between a reduced, almost abstract representation of humans (alienated by work and control) and bodies in action and in struggles, expressing the power of collective action often supported by the “explosive” use of color and collaged forms.
During the lockdown in March and April 2020, Ilić was forced to spend one month in quarantine in his apartment in Belgrade. Interestingly, this sudden form of solitude engendered a new turn in his drawing style. The series of drawings Boarding feature close-up portraits of people marked by health concerns and panic, both on the inside and the outside. While the depiction of these anonymous individuals becomes extremely expressive, Ilić’s portrayal of the executive power of the society of control (police, customs officers, border controllers) stays brutally abstract and cold. Similarly, working conditions under social distancing generate new forms of alienation. The reduced visual language captures this very well, also including a dose of irony and humor when it comes to the notion of consumer society without consumers (Social distancing and Europe 2, 2020).
Since Ilić’s art practice merges visual and performing arts, the exhibition also presents collaborative and performative aspects of his work, in this case his cooperation with the theater maker Bojan Djordjev. On the occasion of centenary of the Russian revolution of 1917, the two artists created the work Orientation in 100 Revolutions (2017), which is a gigantic image but also a “requisite” for a performance involving the collective engagement of the audience.
The exhibition in Kunstraum Innsbruck can also be approached as work in progress: not only will the monumental art work Orientation in 100 Revolutions be removed from the exhibition space and brought into public space, new video work that reflects the slowing down of capitalism due to the coronavirus crisis will also be premiered in September and included in the exhibition display.
The exhibition at Kunstraum Innsbruck is Siniša Ilić’s first solo show in the German-speaking region.
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Boarding, drawings, block marker on paper, 22x27cm, 2020
Social distancing, Europe 1 and Europe 2, drawings, ink, pen and pencil on paper, 21 x 29,5 cm, 2020
Masks, paper cuts, ca. 24 x 33 cm, 2020
Solitude, photographs, on Kunstraum Innsbruck Instagram, 2020
The drawings Boarding and Europe 1 as well as the paper cuts Masks and the photographs Solitude deal with the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic. More precisely, they reflect on the topics of circulation and its sudden change, controlled and shaped by fear, uniformed bodies, states, the virus, care for our health and that of others. The drawings Social distancing and Europe 2 question new patterns of social choreographies and fears, including our physical presence in the public space or absence from habits and rituals surrounding consumption.
Siniša Ilić, Orientation in 100 revolutions, print on textile, 1000 x 1000 cm, 2017
Siniša Ilić and Bojan Djordjev, Orientation in 100 revolutions, performance, video documentation, 2017-ongoing
Orientation in 100 revolutions is a digitally printed picture on textile, one hundred square meters large. The image is an abstract, deconstructed world map. The initial piece was conceived in co-authorship with the theater maker and director Bojan Djordjev, on the occasion of the centenary of the October Revolution.
The narrative of the image and its artistic references, such as Russian avant-garde and related abstract art and collage, examine the relations between the image and the text. The picture was created as part of the performative structure in which it functions as a performative object. The performance action and the image can be interpreted within the framework of two texts: the chronological-geographical-historical list, compiled by the authors, of the revolutions and social riots that have taken place over the past hundred years, as well as fragments from the novel The Poem (1952) by Oskar Davičo, who was a Yugoslavian novelist and poet, revolutionary activist, and a politician. Davičo lists various groups, identities, and entities whose critical thought and action are necessary for rebellion. In the video documentation at Nadežda Petrović Gallery, Čačak, the text performance is accompanied by a minimalist choreography that consists of an index finger pointing to different places in the picture, arbitrarily defining fictitious places in the picture as hotspots, providing a sense of orientation on a deconstructed political map of the world. By staging Orientation in 100 Revolutions on the Alpine glacier in Tyrol, which is disappearing as a result of global warming, Ilić raises the question of how to bring revolutionary political histories and current ecological movements into relation with one another. Siniša Ilić and Bojan Djordjev, Orientation in 100 revolutions, performance, video documentation, 21’ 34’’; Performed by Bojan Djordjev. Performance and documentation: Nadežda Petrović Gallery, Čačak, 2017 Siniša Ilić and Bojan Djordjev, Orientation in 100 revolutions, performance, video documentation, 1’ 51’’; Performed by Sarah Enodeh, Geronimo Jarosch, Ivana Marjanović, Philipp Quehenberger; Camera, editing, sound: Daniel Jarosch; shot at Kaunertaler Glacier; Production Kunstraum Innsbruck 2020
Class society, four drawings, black ink on paper, 27 x 35 cm, 2017 and documentation of the wall painting at Without Anesthesia, The 54th Zagreb Salon of Visual Arts, Meštrović Pavilion, Zagreb, 2019; digital print, 2020
One of the mediums that Siniša Ilić is known for are ephemeral paintings on the walls of exhibition spaces that are gone once the exhibition is finished. This form of “dematerialization of art work” consciously contributes to a critique of commodity fetishism of the (art) market. Furthermore, the original images that he draws on paper as a starting point for the wall paintings serve here as a kind of open “script.” With every new “performing” of the wall images, they are changing, acquiring new features as in performing arts. Due to Covid-19 traveling restrictions, it was not possible for Siniša Ilić to create wall paintings in Kunstraum Innsbruck as planned and hence, the digital print documentation is an alternative solution. Class Society presents sequences of scenes representing working people in the service industry. Workers in restaurants, coffeehouses, concert halls in their repetitive posture of serving become fragmented bodies at some of the most racialized working places of contemporary neoliberal capitalism. The work is one in a series of art works by Siniša Ilić where the artist critically observes and “documents” capitalist division of labor and society.
Waste, video 4’7’’, 2018
Two figures, a man and a woman are moving through a modernist building with worn-out furnishings, which is a museum of contemporary art about to be relocated.The non-narrative video Waste deals with the representation of life and choreographies of life during the period of the industrial development of the Yugoslav city of Rijeka as well as during the present moment. Contrasting the place where it is shot with the present, it stages problems and atmospheres of loneliness and fatigue in today’s post-industrial, digital, and precarious era. The mechanism that sparks the dynamic of a workspace takes the museum’s inventory so as to create a hybrid ambient, a scenography of objects bereft of their initial function. The reliefs which we see as an interior design of the building that appear in the video range from revolutionary communist to modernist socialist, affirming the dynamic international climate and the transitional character of the city. Looking at the estranged activities of (cultural) workers, it questions the conventions of life during the transitional crisis, including the capitalist speed-up bringing humanity to its limit. The video Waste was shot at the former Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Rijeka and produced as part of a larger installation that included work from the museum’s collection from the 1930s. This is the first time this video is shown independently. Performers: Jelena Lopatić, Dušan Barbarić. Camera, editing, sound: Karlo Čargonja. The piece was realized for “On the Shoulders of Fallen Giants”, 2nd Industrial Art Biennial, as a part of the project Rijeka - European Capital of Culture 2020.
Images of regulated or uncontrolled territories, interventions on black and white photographs, collages, 21 x 26 cm and 22 x 30,5 cm, 2015
Images of regulated or uncontrolled territories, are interventions in ink or paint on photographs published in representative monographs that shows European landscapes and cities in recent decades, namely the book Deutschland (Germany) and the famous guidebook Karwendelgebirge (Naturpark Karwendel), published by the Alpenverein. The second one features the largest mountain range of the Northern Calcareous Alps, whose major part is in Tyrol, Austria. Both books were found on the street in Graz, on public book shelves. The art work is a commentary on images that we can recognize through a romanticized iconography of the 20th century, i.e. the conquest of nature, plotting the trajectory of explored areas, production, cities with tradition, construction and development, but also through the current moment, uncertain in its attempt to disturb the illusion of control. The artist intervenes by imagining untold political stories.
On tools and Weapons, video, 4’5’’, 2019
On tools and Weapons was created as part of an intervention and installation in the Museum of African Art in Belgrade. It is part of the series of Siniša Ilić’s art works that deals with the question of the role of museums as an institution (from Tate Modern to museums in former Yugoslavia). The Museum of African Art and its emblematic original design, which represents an interior design and architecture that is a piece of art in itself, was established in 1977. It was built to host a private collection that a Yugoslav diplomat couple who worked as ambassadors in different regions of West Africa gave as a present to the city of Belgrade. The couple did their service in the context of the Non-Aligned Movement that Yugoslavia was part of, actively supporting decolonization movements. However, the collecting and exhibiting of objects acquired in such a context is currently a topic of heated debates surrounding questions of appropriation. Using objects from the museum collection, namely weapons and tools and deciding not to use the most “representative” objects, such as African masks, in the video, raises a set of questions. It problematizes the view of the African continent as an inexhaustible resource that is available for exploitation and colonization but also general issues of survival, struggle, and decolonization. Ending in a kind of post-apocalyptic ambient of the museum’s unfinished attic, the work implies the question of function.The space arranged by the artist in the form of an art installation, which includes the museum’s furniture, objects, ashes, technological waste, old literature, abstract forms, is ultimately abandoned by the actor of the video. Performer: Dušan Barbarić. Camera, editing, sound: Jelena Maksimović. Produced by and filmed at the Museum of African Art in Belgrade.
Without a Proposition for a Concrete Solution, video and space installation, 2016 (video 25’; Lithoprint 50 x 70 cm; Drawing, watercolor on paper, 32 x24 cm; Personal notes by Siniša Ilić; Postcard with handwriting from Siniša Ilić’s family archive, 9,5 x 15,5 cm)
Without a Proposition for a Concrete Solution is a spatial installation and a video, which considers the concepts of friendship and solidarity in three chapters. Siniša Ilić proposes the context of the Non-Aligned Movement and the complex political landscapes of the second half of the 20th century as the historical prism through which to observe these topics. The starting point of the work is a hand-painted postcard from a private archive, dating back to the 1970s and written in “broken” Serbo-Croatian. The postcard was addressed to the artist’s father as a gesture of friendship by an Egyptian friend/colleague. Through the first chapter, this postcard and its written message bring us back to the time of non-aligned politics and the relations that the movement promoted and created, namely a political vision beyond the Cold War, a decolonial non-capitalist world. The concept of the world as the image of a political map, often used in the politics of representation in the Non-Aligned Movement, is established and deconstructed in front of the viewer throughout the entire work. The second chapter consists of conversation notes with a family friend. The conversation is not heard but is present in the form of textual tableaux that enter the film’s structure, and in its contents we can find toponyms such as Amsterdam and Sweden, topics like class and immigration, as well as the organization of life under capitalism. This conversation, located in an apartment somewhere in Western Europe, reconstructs the potentials of freedom in the past, at the same time considering a society balanced on the thin line between community (the common), and situations of control and micro-violence.
The last chapter of the video is a metaphorical and alienated image of the mechanical mass production of images, representing conflicts and pressures as social matrices in whose cracks we might find space for encounters.
Camera: Jelena Maksimović and Lara Kostić, Editing and sound: Jelena Maksimović Lithographs by Siniša Ilić, Printmaking: Dragan Coha. The postcard used in the video is from a private archive. The text is part of a conversation with Maša Kostić. Produced with the support of the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris and the Serbian Ministry of Culture.
Video, 2020
In September the exhibition will be upgraded with new video art work that will reflect the slowing down of capitalist relations of production and exchange due to the new situation caused by the current health crisis.
Changes on the Crust, 2020 - production cancelled due to Covid19
The changes on the crust is a wall painting that puts us, as an audience, in front of a visual puzzle. We see the fragmented form, traces, and paths of color that we try in vain to recognize and merge into a complete picture of the geographical-political atlas and map of the world as we know it and through which we learned about history and society. However, the image in front of us is only reminiscent of the map we know, it is made up of gaps, inconsistencies, places that do not meet, the contours of fictitious borders. Changes on the Crust is one of the works that examine the abstractness and instability of visual representation of geography due to political and social changes and their consequences, the futility of trying to establish a solid idea of the world and the inconsistency of the map we are trying to get used to. Previous works with this focus used as artistic references the methods of the Rorschach test combined with enlarged geographical shapes and regions as images and spaces in which we inscribe our knowledge, misunderstandings, and expectations of the world in which we live. In its ephemerality, the wall painting summarizes the instability and impossibility of a final conclusion about the appearance of the world.
More information: http://sinisailic.blogspot.com/
Texts written and adapted by Siniša Ilić and Ivana Marjanović
SINISA ILIC
was born in 1977 in Belgrade. He holds a BA and MA from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Belgrade. He is the co-founder of TkH (Walking Theory), an art and theory platform initiated by a group of theoreticians and artists in late 2000 in Belgrade. Ilić has showed his works in former Yugoslavia as well as international spaces, among other at the Tate Modern; Georges Pompidou Center, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Arts, Belgrade; Gallery Nova, Zagreb. He has participated in numerous theater projects and residencies, and received various awards.
EVENTS DURING THE EXHIBITION
OPENING
14.08.20, 16:00-21:00
UN_CONTROLLED TERRITORIES
OPEN LABORATORY
10.09.2020 17:00-19:00
REGULIERTE UND UNKONTROLLIERTE TERRITORIEN
with Siniša Ilić (via Live Stream)
OPEN LABORATORY
24.09.2020, 16:30 - 18:00
&
08.10.2020, 16:30 - 18:00
BOOK: ART AND REVOLUTION
by philosopher and art theorist Gerald Raunig
GUIDED TOURS
Samstag 19.09. & 03.10.2020, both at 14:00
UN_CONTROLLED TERRITORIES
with curatorial assistants
Lena Ganahl and Magdalena Saxer
ORIENTATION IN 100 REVOLUTIONS
07.10.2020, 17:00-18:30
ACTION IN PUBLIC SPACES
ARTIST TALK
08.10.2020, 19:00
ONLINE EVENT
with Siniša Ilić, Sabina Sabolović
ONLINE KÜNSTLERGESPRÄCH
