Exhibition Bombofon ▪︎ Nikola Macura

Accompanying program for the exhibition:

Tuesday, July 9, at 6 pm
Art Gallery, Knez Mihailova 6
Conversation and musical performance

Tuesday, July 9, at 8 pm
Square in front of the Cultural Center of Belgrade
Musical performance: The 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 kind 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 musical instruments, such as bombofon – a wind instrument made from projectiles/grenades for the M57 hand-held launcher. The practical value of these artistic objects lies in their 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 possible problem frameworks are opened up for the analysis of the relationship between the utility of art and its social, symbolic, or aesthetic functions.

…It is precisely these other functions of art, its utility, but also the repurposing of materials impregnated with a strong marker of the original function – as is the case with weapons – that becomes the focal point of Nikola Macura's artistic project. Utilitarian objects that produced the sound of shots, blasts, bursts, or explosions during anti-Yugoslav wars are translated into world of utilitarian objects in the art system, whose function is to produce sounds, music, and compositions with a clear anti-war message. The effectiveness of the objects, i.e. musical instruments, the artist enriches with additional symbolic content through performative actions, so crucial at a time when the social currents in the region are marked by strong tendencies of retraditionalization, historical revisionism, and denial of crimes. Finally, by creating a new and different utilitarian aesthetic component of art, whose purpose is achieved through direct use, Macura talks about the transformative potential of art.

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

​
Nikola Macura, 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 connects various media and involves installations and interventions in space, 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, processual works from the 'Interactive Sculpture' series. To this day, he has realized 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.