We can be heroes, just for one day......"
The work cycle entitled “We can be Heroes, just for one day...” takes on the Portrait genre to approach the history of socialist „heroism“ in former Yugoslavia and its changes due to the political events in the 1990ies. The originally collectively idolized „heroes“, who were mostly resistance fighters in WW2, began to be negated, are forgotten, or their role was inherently transformed due to the national demands of the newly established states on the territory of former Yugoslavia.
The Portraits of these „national heroes and heroines“are derived from copies of original photographs found in archives by the artist. These photographic templates are then alienated due to multiple folding and unfolding, so that they remind of dumped photographs in their optical characteristics. This aesthetics of used and littered material refers directly to the transformation and changes in public awareness regarding those heroes in the successor states of former Yugoslavia.
A special focus of the work cycle are the „heroines“ of the NOB (a resistance movement during WW2) who were killed because of their political acts and ideals during WW2. These women belonged to all confessions existing in that region at that time, which developed a whole new dimension of meaning after the civil war in 1991, that was fought also alongside confessional lines. Because these women in their time did not fight for a confession or one of the states established after the civil war, they were for the most part rendered useless as identificatory models. Due to this, these women, after whom schools, streets and factories were named in the 1950ies, begin to fade in public memory, they strand, so to speak, on the junkyard of history. The few, who are implemented now into the national commemoration, are suffering severe transformations in their depiction to make their glorification usable for the new states.
I was very moved by the braveness of these women and their fight for political ideals current up to today. At the same time the search for the true „faces“ of these heroines brought out their touching beauty, authenticity and expressiveness beyond film industry, war propaganda and contemporary beauty patterns.
Translation Philipp Koch
Photograph Michael Jungblut
exhibition view, Festival Kunst am Spreeknie, Berlin Scöneweide, 2012