VISION OF A NATION
What is today the vision of the future in regards to the feelings of longing and belonging to a nation? Why do individuals project their own emotions, anxieties and desires amidst the national community? How is national communion encountered and represented today under the spectre of a newly imagined trans-national geography? What are the limitations, challenges and hopes?
VISION OF A NATION is an exhibition produced by Fotogalleriet, which opens up a territory for questions about the ways contemporary representations of nation, embedded in spatially specific scenarios, translate deeper issues of power, ethnicity, amnesia and radicalization of societies. The project attempts to differentiate and mirror the sense of self along the varying individualized or publicly fuelled narratives. It is against this background that performances of nationhood (-ess) are captured and re-imagined with reflective self-awareness by the invited artists.
What further comes to the foreground in the exhibition is a practice of micro-analytic analysis that situates the nation in conjunction with the increasing interiorization and differentiation processes revealed by current transformations of societies. Navigating and connecting different agencies and forms of memorization, the exhibition unfolds stories concretely grounded in local contexts in which specific identities and depictions of the self are acclaimed or contested. The re-visitation of the semantics of the nation takes into account the fictitious time-space of history narration, the traditional frames for expressing national representation as well as the processes of territorialisation.
VISION OF A NATION represents an exploration of the particular narratives and forms of engagement of individuals / societies with the national imaginary and the operations of history rewriting. Reflecting upon the specificity of each regional and historical context, and mapping the various forms of national (re-) construction, the artists will provide through their work an analytical framework to research and critically re-evaluate themes and representations that appeared in the public realm during recent years.
Bull.Miletic’s work Tele-Vision of a Nation reflects an alternative pathway into the fictional and factual representation of Oslo’s Tryvann Tower in the contemporary Norwegian imaginary. Part of a long-term research dedicated to this observation and television tower, the work discloses a metaphoric space of interaction between the processes of historicization and the sensory aesthetic experience of architecture. The cinematic motion of the revolving slide projection provides a complete panoramic view from the tower – engaging a reflection on the interrelation between natural geography, politics and technology.
Nicu Ilfoveanu’s work Series. Multiples. Realisms. is conceived as an on-going photographic archive documenting the everyday life of public monuments erected in the first world war in the rural ambiance of Romania. The processes of recording these sites of commemoration rely on an anthropological methodology, mediating between the “intangible” and ubiquitous nature of these monuments and their impersonal relationships to the contemporary realities and daily social practices.
Kristina Norman’s work 4000 Square Kilometers of Europe is the outcome of a research carried out in the unrecognized Republic of Transnistria in collaboration with the Estonian documentarian Meelis Muhu. The project surveys the visual apparatus (the symbolic representations and rituals) employed by officials in order to sustain the heroic narratives of state building. The experience shared by the work through different documentary footages allegorically evokes the dialectics of seeing and the particular mode of making sense of the new social and political configuration. 4000 Square Kilometers of Europe represents an interrogating transcription of visual testimonials of an unfinished process of self-narration.
The exhibition is curated by Alina Șerban. Born in 1978, she lives in Bucharest. She recently co-curated the research project Enchanting Views: Romanian Black Sea Tourism Planning and Architecture of the 1960s and ‘70s, Dalles Hall – The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2014), curated The Romanian Pavilion at the 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2009) and at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (2010). She is the editor of the artists’ monographs Ion Grigorescu. The Man with a Single Camera and Geta Brătescu. The Studio (Sternberg Press, 2013).
Exhibition design: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan (studioBASAR) and Dan Balaneanu. studioBASAR was established in 2006 as an architectural studio and a team of urban observation and intervention. www.studiobasar.ro
Bull.Miletic is an artist duo consisting of Synne Bull (Norwegian, born 1973) and Dragan Miletic (American, born Yugoslavia 1970). Bull.Miletic live in Oslo.
Recent solo exhibitions include Bull.Miletic: YUtopia, Intercultural Museum, Oslo (2013), Bull.Miletic: Mise en abyme, Nordnorsk Kunstsenter, Svolvær / RAM Galleri, Oslo / Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco (2013), Bull.Miletic: In The Middle of The End, Atopia, Oslo (2008), Bull.Miletic: Unfinished, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (2008), Bull.Miletic: Heaven Can Wait, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco (2007), Übergang, Pasadena Museum of Californian Art (2005) and Sighting Unseen, Henie Onstad kunstsenter, Høvikodden (2005). Participations in group exhibitions include This must be the place: Pick me up and turn me round, KinoKino, Sandnes (2013), Re-culture 2, 2nd International Visual Art Festival, Patras, Greece (2013), Cities Re-imagined, KinoKino, Sandnes / Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad (2011), TV TOWERS — 8,559 Meters of Politics and Architecture, German Architecture Museum, Frankfurt (2009) and Communism of Forms, The Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (2009).
For further information please visit bull.miletic.info
Nicu Ilfoveanu was born in 1975 in Pitesti, Romania and lives in Bucharest. He graduated from the National University of Arts Bucharest and teaches film/photography at the Department of Video and Photography at the same university.
Solo exhibitions include Series. Multiples. Realisms., Uqbar Project Space, Berlin (2014), Working title 1: Valerica, eau de vie/Working title 2: Jurgis Lemaire vs Christopher Baltrusaitis, Anca Poterasu Gallery, Bucharest (2014), The Mistaken Present Tense, Arsenal Gallery, Poznan (2013), Odnalezieni i utraceni, International Cultural Centre, Krakow, Poland (2012) and Commision!, Center for Visual Introspection, Bucharest (2010). Participations in group exhibitions include Enchanting Views, Romanian Black Sea Tourism Planing and Architecture of the ’60s and ‘70s, MNAC – Dalles Hall, Bucharest (2014), The Forgotten Pioneer Movement, District Kunst- und Kulturförderung, Berlin (2014), Reflection Center for Suspended Histories. An Attempt, national pavilion Romania, 55th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2013), 4th FotoFestival, Mannheim_Ludwigshafen_Heidelberg (2011) and PhotoEspagna, Cuenca (2010)
For further information please visit www.ilfo.ro
Kristina Norman was born in 1979 in Tallinn and lives in Tallinn, Estonia. Norman graduated with an MA and BA from The Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn (2010/2003). She is currently a PhD candidate and lecturer at the The Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn.
Solo exhibitions include We Are Not Alone In The Universe, Turku Art Museum, Turku / Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn (2010), After-War, Estonian pavilion at the 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2009) and Pribalts, Arrivals>Art from the New Europe, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2006) . Participations in group exhibitions include Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg (2014), Confrontations and Provocations. A Perspective on Estonian Art. Museum of Contemporary Art, Szczecin (2010), It’s A Set-Up, Kiasma Art Museum, Helsinki (2010), 3rd AIM International Biennale Festival Marrakesh, Marrakesh (2009) and Reimagining October, London Baltic X Triennial of International Art, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2009).
For further information please visit www.kristinanorman.ee
The exhibition is kindly supported by the Freedom of Expression Foundation (Fritt Ord)
