Film and video program accompanying The Visible Ones exhibition

 

Topography, Spaces, Gaps, 16/12/2023 at 5 pm, MMSU

Woman in the Mirror, 19/12/2023 at 6 pm, Art Kino

Film and video program conceived as a side program of The Visible Ones exhibition, which will be open to the public from 15 December 2023 to 6 February 2024 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. The Visible Ones is a collaborative project involving five museums (MSU Zagreb, MMSU Rijeka, Split Gallery of Fine Arts, Dubrovnik Art Gallery, Osijek Museum of Fine Arts).

The exhibition gives an overview of the recent creative production of female artists, raising awareness about the need for equal visibility and representation of female authors in museum collections and exhibition programs. The production spans a wide array of topics and sensibilities, gathering more than ninety female artists, and results from research on the inclusion of female artists in the art collections of museum institutions. It also represents an attempt to document the contemporary art practice of female authors in Croatia, pointing to its specific aspects.

Film and video screening program is presented in the form of a dislocated dispositive, from the museum’s white cube to the cinema hall or black box. The aim is to further expand the context and direct the attention towards the abundant and diverse audiovisual production of female artists, which emerged precisely within the intersection of contemporary art and film. It includes two parts: Topography, Spaces, Gaps (MMSU, 16 December 2023) and Woman in the Mirror (Art kino, 19 December 2023).

From the 1960s and 1970s to the contemporary redefinition of the new canon, the female artists’ video production shared a marginal position with the development of video art in general, as it was a new art medium then. Having entered the dominant male field, female video art faced challenges in gaining visibility and securing a place within the art system and its institutions, creating a new language in a yet unexplored terrain.

As part of Topography, Spaces and Gaps program, on 16 December the following video works are shown at the MMSU: The Mountain (Hrvoslava Brkušić), Porvenir (Renata Poljak), Carbon (Tina Gverović), Abode of Vacancy (Tanja Deman), Transformance (Nina Kurtela) and Currents (Katerina Duda). Topographies, spaces and gaps bring together works that, through the framing of space and time, of place and identity, reflect the interplay and tensions within different spatial and temporal dynamics between man and the environment. Centered on the landscape experience, be it natural or constructed, and whether derived from archival found footage or poetic documentation, these scenes encapsulate spaces and architecture with ambiguous and uncertain statuses, caught in a delicate balance between the past and the future.

Film program of The Woman in the Mirror, which is shown on December 19 at Art Kino, deals with the position of women artists within the art system, as well as their position in society. Beside the filmmakers  – Jagoda Kaloper, Lynne Sachs, Martina Meštrović and Tanja Vujasinović – who address these themes in their works, the position of female artists is also discussed by the protagonists. Internationally acclaimed artists featured in the avant-garde film anthologies Gunvor Nelson, Barbara Hammer and Carolee Schneeman discuss this in documentary film Carolee, Barbara, Gunvor by Lynne Sachs; the Croatian sculptor Marija Ujević talks about it in animated experimental film Cat is Always Female by Martina Meštrović and Tanja Vujasinović, and actress and painter Jagoda Kaloper reflects on these issues in a self-portrait film Woman in the Mirror.

The Rijeka episode of the Visible project is carried out with the support of the City of Rijeka and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, while the film and video program is supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre.

The Visible Ones exhibition is realized by: Martina Munivrana (MSU, Zagreb), the project’s author and concept creator, Jasminka Babić (GU Split), Vilma Bartolić (in collaboration with Branka Benčić and Diana Zrilić, MMSU, Rijeka), Valentina Radoš (MLU, Osijek), Rozana Vojvoda (UGD, Dubrovnik), and Ana Škegro (MSU, Zagreb) (performance and discourse program).

The concept for the film and video program in Rijeka: Branka Benčić (MMSU, Rijeka), in collaboration with Jelena Androić.

Visual identity: Sanja Kuzmanović