Curatorial statement by Mathea Milkovic Saric
Preko grane can be translated as «across the border». The crossing of the border from the Balkans[1] to Western Europe conjures up the idea of reaching a place of abundance and prosperity. But what happens after the displacement? Motivated by both conflict and labor opportunities, the Balkan diaspora has set roots across the continent. However, life on the other side has proven itself as double-edged; despite the prospect of prosperity, the new life day-by-day equally comes with estrangement – arising through bureaucratic obstacles, strained family relations, cultural and personal loss. The alienation that arises in the wake of this displacement makes the anchor point of the exhibition Preko grane, where Damir Avdagić, Tanja Ostojić, Mila Panić, and Kjetil Skøien present works that document, elaborate on and actively makes use of this condition in an artistic pivot.
We start in Oslo. In an art scene far from the Balkan context, and in this time at a moment of unrest. On the right, in the first room, Kjetil Skøien displays selected archive materials from the performance Tangent (Lost rooms) from 1995. In the video documentation, we are introduced to six men from the age of 20 to 27, who at the time were newly arrived refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina. One by one they describe a room from a home that now is gone, destroyed or occupied by others. Over the span of a week, from October 8 to 13 at midnight, the performers performed in each their room in an empty office landscape. The video recording show how they move objects and perform planned movements, under Skøien’s direction. The sound is composed by one text for each performer, based on interviews with each of them. Objects, colors, window views and wall-hung pictures are described in detail – everything except from what’s taking place on the outside.
With certainty, the project bears the mark of something that has been lost in the translation between context, range of experience and language. The rooms described appear as vague and unfulfilled. This distance is not only a consequence of lingual barriers; Skøien’s position, as the one of the audiences, is from the outside, looking in. It is further enhanced by the limitations of memory, and the performing men’s choice to omit information; they become the makers of the work just as much as its subjects. The video documentation is supplemented by portraits of the performers both from before and during the performance. Looking at these images today, 30 years later, we are reminded that they may be our neighbors, the fathers of our classmates, or perhaps somewhere else entirely. Possibly, one of them is the uncle of the curator.
Juxtaposing Skøien, Mila Panić offers an internal perspective on a family’s displacement. In the work We Have a Wonderful Life (2014), the notion of ideal migration is both confirmed and questioned. A six-channel video installation plays recordings sent to the artist’s family by relatives who migrated to Australia in the late 1990s. They show newly purchased speakers and electronics, often with narodnjaci[2] playing in the background, as well as the children’s swimming and horse-riding lessons. There is even one recording from a family member who is struggling financially but still does not want to return “home”. The work also includes the photo series Pool and Doubles, comprised of analogue and digital photographs sent from the same group of relatives. Here the children are depicted as spoiled in a stereotypical suburban manner, with a big garden pool and an abundance of gifts.
By reworking the family’s communication in the aftermath of the civil war, Panić creates a distance between her place of origin and the one where she lives today. In parallel to making the work on view, she herself emigrated from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Germany. Through this movement, what distanced her from her relatives across the border twenty years ago was transformed into a common denominator. In turn the recordings remerge as parts of an artistic endeavor to “make it” in Germany. The work provides insight to a family’s directed presentation of their new everyday life; as much as they display their actual lives, the recordings may equally be understood as a picture post card to maintain the illusion of success across the border.
Behind the molton curtain, in the innermost exhibition space, we encounter a different reflection on individual displacements, this time rooted in Norwegian-Balkan experiences. Here, Damir Avdagić’s Prolazi izmedju 1980-2021 (Passages between 1980-2021) (2021) is on display. The video works as an intergenerational testimony from the time leading up to and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, told through young people who, like Avdagić himself, fled to Norway in the 1990s. The camera observes the participants in a circular movement as they chronologically recount experiences from their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. When the participants discuss, reminisce and laugh about their own first encounters with Norway, the camera stops. These scenes are often narrated in Norwegian, even though the participants share Bosnian as their mother tongue. Not only are their reflection of national identity emphasized, but also memories of strict parents and fabric softeners. The temporality of the narrative is multilayered by historical events intersecting in the everyday life events, as the participants tell each other stories.
The exhibition concludes in the largest exhibition space with pink walls, and on the note that the power dynamic between the migrant and the citizen is best left untouched. Tanja Ostojić’s work Looking for a Husband with EU-Passport (2000-2005) documents and is the artists experience of migrating to Germany after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Directed as a strategic artwork, Ostojić embarks on a search for a husband who, as the title of the work indicates, can grant her an EU citizenship. In 2000, Ostojić distributes a personal ad physically and digitally, including a nude portrait of herself, and what she looks for in her future husband. Potential candidates are asked to contact her via email at hottanja@hotmail.com. After exchanging nearly 500 letters with men across Europe, her choice falls on the German artist, Klemens Golf. Ostojić and Golf meet for the first time in a public performance outside of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (November 28, 2001), which is documented through the video work CrossingOver (2001). They officially married in a private ceremony a month later, and two months following this Ostojić moves to Germany. The installation in this exhibition consists of both visual artistic elements and legal documents that narrate the work’s course of events, emphasizing its existence at the verge between fiction and reality. In 2005, the work had its logical conclusion in a divorce, which also marks the beginning of the rest of Ostojić’s life in Germany. As a totality, the work mobilizes marriage against institutional barriers and migration policies, revealing the xenophobia that guards “Fortress EU.”
The works included in Preko grane contain a range of stories and forms of storytelling from a diaspora with the experience of living with a complicated national identity. Germany and Norway are among the countries with the largest Balkan diaspora in Europe. However, they remain a rather unrecognized group in Norwegian public discourse – possibly due to their success as “integration winners”; the Balkan minority «is recognized as Norwegian through not being noticed».[3] The forms of alienation shown through the artistic contributions in the exhibition cracks this simplified understanding; does displacement automatically make a better life? And are the ones crossing the border truly motivated by desire when they leave their country and culture, even when the crossing has become vital? Acknowledging the complexity of the boundaries between gratitude and loss, home and away, mine and yours, is crucial. Preko grane is an attempt to emphasize this intricacy, in a time when drawing more rigid lines and an increasingly unlimited reality exist side by side.
[1] The Balkans / Balkan is here defined as countries that were members of the former Yugoslavia.
[2] Popular folk music from Balkan, such as Sejo Kalač’s «Idi Ženo Iz Moga Života» (2002)
[3] Quote from PhD candiate at OsloMet, Edin Kozaric (f. 1991), that sums up the phenomena of the «invisible immigrant»: Kozaric, E. (2020). Fortellingene om Bosnia, Internasjonal Politikk 78, 2/2020, 217-223. The formulation also points to a statement made by SSB: Dzamarija, M. T. (2016). Bosniere – integreringsvinnere. Samfunnsspeilet, Statistisk sentralbyrå, 4/2016, 15–20.
Public program
With the support of the Fritt Ord Foundation, Preko grane also unfolds as a public program that will run throughout the exhibition period.
On Tanja Ostojić, with Wencke Mühleisen and Una Mathiesen Gjerde
Friday January 16th, 16:30 – 17:30 at BO
Light serving. Language: Norwegian.
Following the opening, author and former performance artist, Wencke Mühleisen will meet BO’s director Una Mathiesen Gjerde in a conversation on the work of Tanja Ostojić. Departing from Ostojić’s feminist and boundary crossing performance language, the conversation will explore the potential of the body as an artistic, political, and revolutionary tool.
Artist talk with Mila Panić and Anahita Alebouyeh
Sunday January 18th, 12:30 – 13:30 at BO
Light serving. Language: English
Concluding the opening weekend, Mila Panić will meet the Persian-Norwegian artist Anahita Alebouyeh in an artist talk, moderated by the curator of the exhibition, Mathea Milkovic Saric. Starting from Panić and Alebouyeh’s artistic practices, the talk will be concentrated on the use of humor and absurdity in narrating the migrant experience.
Artist talk Damir Avdagić and psychologist Ajla Terzić
Sunday, January 25th, 13:00 – 14:00 på BO
Light serving. Language: Norwegian.
Sunday January 25th, we invite audiences to join us for a conversation between Damir Avdagić and psychologist Ajla Terzić, moderated by Mathea Milkovic Saric. With Avdagić’s aritstic practice as its anchoring point, the conversation will explore notions of loss of identity, as well as generational transmission of trauma and memory.
Artists talk Kjetil Skøien
Friday, January 30th, 16:30 – 17:30 at BO
Light serving. Language: Norwegian.
Concluding the public program on January 30th, Kjetil Skøien will present his work in conversation with Mathea Milkovic Saric. The talk will place focus on Tangent (Lost Rooms) from 1995, which is on display retrospectively in the exhibition through various archival material. One of the performers, Dubravko Saric, will also join the conversation to tell about his experience of the project.
Acknowledgements
The exhibition has been realized with generous support from Arts and Culture Norway. The public program is supported by the Fritt Ord Foundation.
Additionally, the curator of the exhibition, Mathea Milkovic Saric would like to extend her sincere gratitude to the following: Director and partner-in-BO Una Mathiesen Gjerde and BO’s board for the support. Mattias Hellberg for being a good technician and friend. Kunstnernes Hus for the media players, tips and help. Thomas Tveter from Kunstnerforbundet for the display case and JVC screens. NITJA’s Lars Erik Haugen for a generous technical loan. Sofia, Henrik and the rest of the Oslo Kunstforening team for borrowing us equipment (always!). Sigbjørn Bratlie for the screen. Mariusz Maslanka from UKS for the seating. Bjørn Erik Haugen for the Hantarexes. Fatou Åsheim for the Grundig with the antennas. Kristian, Nicholas, Mimmi and Frida for being good loft neighbors and conversation partners. Hedda Grevle for good advice. Thelma and Kaya for driving. Boye for the projection surface and in life. Dubravko Saric, my uncle, for telling me about Skøien’s project. Tata Jadranko Saric for a lot, mama Danijela Milkovic, sestra Maia Milkovic Saric, baka Maria i deda Mane, majka Edina.