”We want a healthy optimism”
”People of Europe create for yourself sacred possessions. Build!”
Jasmina Cibic, born in 1979 in Ljubljana, but lives and works in London. Cibic’s works reveal the strategies employed for the construction of national culture and identity through the arts as well as their use on behalf of political goals. In the end, her works are large-scale research projects incorporating artists, architects, scholars, artisans, writers and other experts.
Cibic represented Slovenia at the 2013 Venice Biennale and has realized numerous solo international exhibitions, including those at the Esker Foundation, Calgary; MSU Zagreb; MOCA Belgrade; Aarhus 2017; MGLC Ljubljana and the Ludwig Museum, Budapest. In 2018, Cibic will have solo exhibitions at BALTIC Gateshead and DHC Montreal.
NADA: Act I (2016)
10 min 56 sec
The central element of Nada: Act I is Vjenceslav Richter’s first, but unrealized design for the Yugoslav Pavilion at the 1958 EXPO in Brussels. Cibic appropriates and recreates the pavilion as a sculpture, which in turn functions as the skeleton of her new short film that questions the nature of soft power construction. In the single channel video installation, a violinist continually tunes the architecture according to the Miraculous Mandarin, a musical composition for ballet by Béla Bartók which was chosen to represent Yugoslavia and its final version of the pavilion architecture.
NADA: Act II (2017)
13 min 01 sec
The film is based on the 1958 production of Béla Bartók’s pantomime ballet The Miraculous Mandarin – the work that the Yugoslav State chose to represent its new direction on Nations Day at the Brussels EXPO almost sixty years ago. Here it is repurposed, mis-imagined and overwritten with new purpose in collaboration with the choreographer Lea Anderson. Bartok’s original characters – the pimps, prostitute and exotic Mandarin – are here replaced with the archetypes of politicians, the ideal of Mother Nation, and that most easily abused of Modern practitioners: the architect. Shot in the Arne Jacobsen’s Aarhus City Hall it links across time and space various European models of statecraft, soft power and its framing.
Co-commissioned by European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead and supported by Arts Council England, Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University and Waddington Studios London.
NADA Act III – The Exhibition (2017)
17 min 14 sec
The last part of the NADA trilogy was commissioned specifically for the artist’s exhibition at the Museum Hous Esters Krefeld where the artist developed a context specific film and exhibition project surrounding the perturbing history of Mies van der Rohe’s Krefeld Vilas. The script for the film is assembled from transcripts, political discussions, reports and personal letters surrounding Germany’s presentations at world expositions in 1929, 1937 and 1958 and their legacy. Cibic devises the script into three positions: the Artist, the Curator and Germania engage in a discussion about the aesthetics and style of the artworks and architecture that should be exhibited at an undisclosed event of national interest in order to ensure international success.
