Exhibition Bombofon ▪︎ Nikola Macura

Accompanying program for the exhibition:

Tuesday, July 9, at 6 pm
Art Gallery, Knez Mihailova 6
Talk and music performance

Tuesday, July 9, at 8 pm
Square in front of the Cultural Center of Belgrade
Music performance: Rusty Orchestra

​
​
FROM NOISE TO SOUND

Describing his artistic practice as socially engaged, Nikola Macura emphasizes that most of his works also have a specific type of utilitarian value. In his latest project 'From Noise to Sound,' he uses the method of upcycling: finding and taking weapons and other props from military waste in Temerin, and transforming them into artistic forms of musical instruments, such as the bombofon - a wind instrument made from projectiles/grenades for the hand launcher M57. The utility value of these artistic objects is reflected in the ability to perform musical performances in collaboration with professional musicians and the 'Rusty Orchestra,' as Macura calls it. Through this artistic process, a series of potential problem frameworks are opened up for analyzing the relationship between the utility of art and its social, symbolic, or aesthetic functions.

...It is precisely these other functions of art, its utilitarianism, but also the repurposing of materials imbued with the strong marker of their original function - as is the case with weapons - that becomes the focal point of Nikola Macura's artistic project. Utilitarian objects that produced the sounds of shots, bursts, salvos, or explosions during the anti-Yugoslav wars are translated into the world of utilitarian objects in the artistic system, whose function is the production of sounds, music, and compositions with a clear anti-war message. The purposefulness of the objects, i.e. musical instruments, is enriched by the artist's performative actions with additional symbolic content, so essential at a time when the region's social trends are marked by strong tendencies of re-traditionalization, historical revisionism, and denial of crimes. Finally, by creating a new and different utilitarian aesthetic component of art, whose purposefulness is realized through direct use, Macura speaks of the transformative potential of art.

(From the text About the bombofon and the utilitarian value of art, Zoran Erić. The full text can be read HERE.)

​
Nikola Macura, a master of sculpture, is an associate professor at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. He was born in 1978 in Novi Sad. Nikola Macura's artistic practice combines various media and involves installations and spatial interventions, sculpture, and drawing, primarily in the form of socially engaged art. After completing his studies, he actively exhibits in group and solo exhibitions in the country and abroad. Since 2000, he has participated in the large-scale Led art performance 'Kunstlager,' and from 2003 to 2013, he has been continuously involved in the work of the Multimedia Center 'Art Clinic.' In 2002, he realized his first installation in a public space, and in 2003, he exhibited the first in a series of interactive, procedural works from the 'Interactive Sculpture' series. To date, he has implemented a large number of interventions and installations, and his latest project, which is still in progress, deals with reexamining the relationship between sculpture and sound, or the process of redesigning military props into sound objects.