The curator of the exhibition is a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zoran Erić (PhD).
The exhibition “Nothing Personal” by Miodrag Krkobabić examines the position of an individual in the society of nowadays and the processes of socialisation, individualisation and (attempts of) formation of a personal identity which is never predetermined and permanent, but rather a subject of continuous changes. The project is based on exploring the difference between a personal experience and the understanding of identity, and the identity as an appearance in the eyes of others, i.e. as a starting sample in the process of recognition and identification.
The exhibition “Nothing Personal” encompasses a cycle of works created after 2000, such as: A portrait of a bearded man, Personal? ID, and Necrospective. The exhibition clearly defines the bases that these works take as their starting points, the trajectory of their development, as well as historical and theoretical references, and brings them into mutual interaction with new works produced under the specific conditions of the exhibiting space of the Gallery-Legacy. The works in question are a series of ambient sets consisting of photos, audio- and video-installations.
Among his recent works stands out the project entitled In Absentia, where the artist deals with the Dragović monastery erected in 1395. After suffering multiple devastations, the monastery was finally destroyed in 1959. It was submerged under the water of an artificially made lake accumulated for the Peruća hydroelectric power plant. Although the primary intention was to move the monastery and graveyard on a nearby hill, the truth―along with the monastery and graveyard where the artist’s ancestors were also buried―emerged with the demolition of the dam during the collapse of SFRY. The project In Absentia draws its inspiration from a particular space, historical developments, architectural form and people that existed there. The work is concerned with memory and the way in which the damaged relationship between nature and architecture, and also the ensuing migrations, had an impact on individuals and the formation of their Janus-faced identities.
Miodrag Krkobabić (1971) lives and works in Belgrade. He participated at more then a hundred exhibitions, festivals and art projects in gallery and public spaces worldwide. He is a recipient of numerous major awards and fellowships, such as the October Award (Serbia) in 2001, the Gallery Award at the Memorial of Nadežda Petrović in Čačak in 2002, the Honorary Award at the Videobrasil festival in São Paulo in 2003, the Jury Award at the Cairo Biennale in 2005. The same year, with the fellowship of KulturKontakt from Vienna, he stayed in Austria as a resident artist. He had his education at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. As a fellow of DAAD in 2003-2004 he stayed in Germany (HfK, Bremen) specialising in the field of audiovisual compositions, and this is the subject he today lectures on at the High School of Fine and Applied Arts of Vocational Studies in Belgrade.
For more information on the artist see online: http://www.krkobabic.net.
The exhibition will run until June 8, every working day between 12:00 and 20:00, except Tuesdays. The location of the Čolaković Legacy: http://bit.ly/1HaLVFQ.
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