Page 87 - The MoMA/ Guggenheim issue of World of Art magazine (2003)

magda Carneci

in Search of Balkania

as the three curators put it, this exhibition that
was opened at the neue galerie in graz, austria,

between october and December 2002, intended
“to lift a long overdue ban on the Balkans as a site
of intellectual endeavor and cultural desire.” roger
conover – executive editor of the department of

art, architecture and visual culture at the famous
MiT Press in Boston-, eda cufer – an active
slovenian art critic, promoter of the irwin group,
and Peter Weibel – outstanding austrian visual

artist and theoretician, conceived in search of
Balkania as a curatorial operation and an artistic
experience “against expectations”, confronting
a subject full of historical contradictions and

cultural prejudices, infamous due to the recent
ex-yugoslavian wars, but also full of an enormous
TOMiSLAV GOTOVAc
creative potential. it is this explosive artistic
foxy MisTer 2002
richness that has become recently fashionable 5 PhoTogr aPhs, 50 x 60 cM each

again in Western europe, especially in the german- courTesy of The arTisT
PhoTo: ToMisl av cuvel jak
speaking countries, as the great number of cultural SELDA ASAL
events dedicated to the Balkans in the last two shoe sTore 2002
years prove. WinDoW insTall aTion

after five years of travels and researches
throughout the south-east european cultural
milieus, 60 artists have been eventually selected
to construct a “matrix of Balkanic spaces” and a

“complex of metaphors” for what would mean the
genius loci and the strange, incongruous, essence
of homo balkanicus. alongside the two floors of the
neue galerie in graz, an impressive, sophisticated,

and sometimes shocking exhibitional discourse
was displayed, that filled up the white, aseptic

WORLD of ART 85