Elevate May 2021 | Air Serbia

KULTURA / CULTURE

GORANKA MATIĆ RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION Experience in crowds: a romantic journey through history This retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade presents a chronological unfolding of events that occurred in Serbia and Yugoslavia over the previous 40 years. Until 25 th May, through several hundred photos, museum visitors have the opportunity to check out the cultural and social changes in this exciting country that has changed names and ideologies.

other subjects, but Goranka was interested in ordinary passers-by. She placed alongside their photo-portraits answers to questions – how would they like to be called, where would they like to live and what would they like to do, while the only real information was their age. That is how Ira Fassbinder, a madam from a brothel in Budapest, was “born”, in a man’s shirt, with a tie and a cigar between her teeth. “That was my alter-ego, con- structed for this specific occasion,” explains Goranka. This unusual picture dominates one of the museum’s walls, testifying to the time when women were ladies, even though they were called comrades. Days of pain and pride Two years later, in May 1980, the window displays of all shops nationwide displayed prominent portraits of the late Josip Broz Tito, with black flora covering the corner of the frame. Expressions of respect for the life- time president of the country also had a humorous note, because the arrangements featured items included in the shops’ offers, from children’s toys to cured sausages. “Who would resist such scenes?” asks Goranka modestly. For critics, that series of photographs, later dubbed ‘Days of Pain and Pride’, showed the absurdity of the idea of a dignified display of citizens’ collective grief. “To me it all seemed like pagan gifts for the deceased,” says a smiling Matić. Sextet from SKC What followed was the New Wave in music, while classical expressions of visual art were replaced by concep-

E verything began seemingly accidentally, while Goranka was still engaged in her primary pro- fession as an art historian associate of the fine art programme of the Students’ Cultural Centre (SKC). “I was a child of the SKC, where the history of the 1970s and ‘80s was ‘written’ through various programmes, including the first Feminist Con- ference beyond Western countries, which was held in 1978 under the title ‘Drug-ca Žena’,” explains Goranka. The gathering was attended by both internation- al and domestic scholars of philosophy, sociology and

Red za film Ko to tamo peva Queue for the film Who’s Singin’ Over There

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