Exhibition About History ▪︎ Darija Petković, Neja Tomšič and Vladimir Živojinović

History is a strange science. In today's world of fast communication and abundance of information, it seems almost trivial and harmless. For most people, events of the past are always mildly distant from reality and do not have the same impact after years, decades, or centuries have passed. On the other hand, it is clear that every ruling regime seeks to control historical discourses as they are an integral part of the national and cultural identity of a particular group. Therefore, history is always monitored from above. The victor in a conflict strives to control history to be remembered as the winner, and in that process, manipulation of contexts often occurs. This is probably the reason why the boundary between history and mythology is so unclear and undefined today.

Thus, history is never entirely static and defined. On the contrary, it is quite dynamic and changeable. The current situation can easily transform the perception of the past. Historical revisionism appears in every regime and every zeitgeist; newly formed states seek to create their own historical narratives that are often connected with conflicts, struggle, and sacrifice; the contemporary woke movement calls for questioning traditional historical canons and advocates for a revision of history based on today's ethical standards; increasingly powerful corporations, which now own the majority of media and online communication platforms, create their own history based on their short-term interests, hiding the role of big businesses in turbulent events of the past.

Unbiased, objective, and nonlinear historiography can reveal a series of paradoxes that seriously undermine established and idealized heroic narratives. The three artists in the exhibition titled About History, Darija Petković, Neja Tomšič and Vladimir Živojinović, each in their own distinctive way, explore historical narratives, but always differently and far from commonly accepted interpretations. They also often deal with hidden episodes of major historical narratives, always observing them with critical distance. They question different representations of history and its role in shaping political and public discourses of the present, dealing with specific episodes of local and global history (which are inevitably interconnected). Although their practices are completely different, all three combine image and text to further contextualize the content.

In his work Damnatio memoriae, 2017-2024, Darija Petković deals with ways of constituting memory. Using photographs, found objects, archival material, and texts, he analyzes selected historical events that are inscribed in collective memory through public and media discourses. The work follows and comments on the consequences of social, ideological, and economic transition in Croatia, and the broader region, characterized by the rejection of social egalitarian values and historical revisionism. The series' central point is symbolic locations that have marked the recent history of Croatia. The exhibition features three elements of this series; one of them is the work Uvala Slana (2018), which depicts the site of the first concentration camp of the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945), whose silhouette is featured on the currency of that time.

In her interdisciplinary artistic practice, Neja Tomšič often explores suppressed and neglected episodes from history. In the work Opijumski kliperi, 2015-2024, she uses multilayered approaches, such as performance storytelling, artist's book, appropriated photographs, and texts, to collect and tell stories that examine the legacy of colonialism, hidden and ignored in official historiography, which offers answers to numerous complex questions related to current geopolitical relations. Opijumski kliperi deals with the period when East Asian countries were forced to enter the global free market, thereby relinquishing a significant part of their sovereignty. The work reveals the legacy of the opium wars today, as some of the largest banks, insurance companies, investment and transport companies built their power on opium trade.

Vladimir Živojinović in the series Dunavska divizija, 2022-2024, reflects on historical events from a very personal perspective. He focuses on the events around the breakthrough of the Salonika Front at the end of World War I, in which his great-grandfather participated, resulting in the liberation of Serbia in 1918. The series of photographs, combined with explanations in texts, offers a microhistorical perspective and portrays events that are ubiquitous in literature today in a different light. To counteract any kind of simplified narrative, Živojinović applies various approaches, such as landscape photographs with context, portraits, family archives, and creates a personal topography that shows the interconnectedness of official and personal history.