29 Oct 2008

The 49th October Salon, Belgrade

The 49th October Salon
Artist-Citizen
Contextual artistic practices
Belgrade, September 26 – November 9 2008

Curated by: Bojana Pejić
Assistant curators: Vida Knežević and Ivana Marjanović
Exhibition design: Slobodan Danko Selinkić, architect

Founder and patron the City of Belgrade
Organised by the Cultural Centre of Belgrade www.kcb.org.yu
With the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia

Ana Adamović, Antea Arizanović, Reli Avrahami, Maja Bajević, Yael Bartana, Lutz Becker, Cristiano Berti, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Dan Calin, Chto delat?, DAH teatar, Danica Dakić, Braco Dimitrijević, Lina Dokuzović, Andrej �?erković, Eva Filova, Kendell Geers, Girls on Horses, Kaspars Goba, Ion Grigorescu, Živko Grozdanić, Igor Grubić, Marina Gržinić / Aina Šmid, Driton Hajredini, h.arta, Ana Hoffner, International strike of artists, Fitore Isufi Koja, Sanja Iveković, Vladan Jeremić, Šejla Kamerić, Gülsün Karamustafa, Sigalit Landau, Wei Liu, Milovan Destil Marković, Nikoleta Marković, Dalibor Martinis, Goranka Matić, Mladen Miljanović, Monument Group, Damir Nikšić, New Collectivism, Tanja Ostojić, Vesna Pavlović, Dan Perjovschi, Tadej Pogačar, Darinka Pop-Mitić, Marta Popivoda, Zoran Popović, Danilo Prnjat, Nurhan Qehaja, Queer Belgrade Collective, Jelena Radić / Eduard Freudmann, Oliver Ressler, Pipilotti Rist, Martha Rosler, Katya Sander, Judith Siegmund, Ivana Smiljanić, Sašo Stanojkoviќ, Hito Steyerl, Mladen Stilinović, Branimir Stojanović, Saša Stojanović, Balint Szomabthy, Škart, Ilija Šoškić, Frank Thiel, Raša Todosijević, Jelena Tomašević, Milica Tomić, Ranko Travanj, Goran Trbuljak, Egbert Troggemann, Ulay, Gergelj Urkom, Valie Export, Katarina Zdjelar, Artur Zmijewski

The 49th October Salon presents those artistic practices that have been called art-in-context for a number of decades. The exhibition Artist-Citizen does not intend to proclaim contextual art, which has been known since the 1970's (one of its forms has been institutional critique); instead, it will try to map the artistic and theoretical positions that question the notion of the autonomy of art in today's democratic societies, where, irrespective of whether those are Western democracies that have existed over a long historical period or new post-Communist democracies, the existence and the activities of civil society are not taken for granted, but constitute an active work-in-progress performed day by day.

The fifth international October Salon presents artistic and theoretical positions that visualise, that is, thematise those aspects of 'the given context' that are constructed as invisible in the public space of democratic (and neoliberal) environments, such as the issues of privatisation, unemployment, refugees, homelessness, sex work, trafficking in women, human rights of minority groups, immigration, the surveillance society, censorship, current reinvention of religion, anarchism etc., or have been identified as belonging not to the public but the private sphere (such as violence against women or children, for example).

The 49th October Salon is held in a number of exhibition venues. What is exhibited at the May 25th Museum are works by artists who, in some cases, are clearly feminist-oriented; institutional critique of the 1970's; ideological critique formulated in the period of state socialism and/or after it. At the Cultural Centre of Belgrade the topic is sexual work and its various forms; the works exhibited at the 'Artget' Gallery thematise queer positions. The works exhibited at the Legacy House examine the policies of collective memory and collective oblivion, nationalist ideology and religion. The Public Bath 'Danube' is a venue intended for works dealing with capital, capitalism, globalisation, poverty, emigration, the EU policy, the effects of mass culture/media, etc.

The purpose of this exhibition is not to offer any kind of 'message' to the general and the professional public; still, this exhibition does have a motto, and an interrogative one at that:

Do we need art to tell us what we do not want to know?


The venues of the 49th October Salon

The May 25th Museum – the Museum of History of Yugoslavia, Botićeva 6
The Cultural Centre of Belgrade / The Fine Arts Gallery, Knez Mihailova 6 & The Artget Gallery, Republic Square 5/I
The Legacy House, Knez Mihailova 46
The Danube Public Bath, Cara Dušana 45
The Context Gallery – The Cultural Centre Stari grad, Kapetan Mišina 6a
///open 12.00 – 20:00, Mon closed///
The Graphic Collective Gallery, Obilićev venac 27
///open 11:00 – 20:00 on weekdays, Sat 10:00 – 16:00, Sun closed ///
The Jewish Municipality Belgrade, Kralja Petra 71а, 2nd floor
Rectorate of Belgrade University, Studentski trg 1
The Belgrade Psychoanalytical Society, Smederevska 9a
DAH Theatre, Marulićeva 8

More information www.oktobarskisalon.org