Jubilee Twenty-fifth Memorial Nadežda Petrović, on the initiative of its Art Director Miodrag Krkobić, is a collaborative project signed by four curators with different sensibilities but with a joint aim to critically and responsibly examine and rearticulate the existing standards of culture.
Creative programming behind the Twenty-fifth Memorial was structured around an aim to create an innovative and perspicuous discourse in response to the waning cultural production of the country. The exhibition functions on several levels: artistic, real-asthetic, communicational, political, scientific and cognisance level. Establishing this conceptual platform offered a model for fierce critical engagement in culture and society, and not just a space for active artistic practice.
The title of this year’s exhibition – I Am What I Am – corresponds with life and work of Nadežda Petrović. Petrović’s life choices – torn between opposing ideologies and systems but always dominated by her faith in constant progress, freedom and community – caused us to consider the context of the times we live in, possibilities that we’re given and choices that we all make as individuals and as a society. I Am What I Am in the domain of art stimulates circulation of various levels of language, networking people and cultures, as well as fulfilled existence in relation to given conditions and options here and now. On one hand there is history, institution, name, resources, leader, strategy and discourse, and on the other are independent individuals with different affinities and interests which are not coopted by the system but are defined by their dedication to act. Exhibition of the Twenty-fifth Memorial has made its goal to point at the urgency of dynamic process, of free labour, words and actions.
