paula muhr

PAULA MUHR (Serbia)

Paula Muhr, from the On Show series, 2002-2007

Paula Muhr, from the On Show series, 2002-2007

*On Show (2002-2007)

The images of shop windows, store entrances, kiosk fronts and other similar objects are result of my long street walks in various Balkan cities. The chosen windows are remnants of an era that has already ended and as such, are also gradually disappearing in the process of being redesigned. Deprived of their primary functional value, due to their out-datedness and rather quaint aesthetics, these old shop windows become non-places, metaphors of a society in rapid transition and objects of nostalgic investment. The strangeness of their design, the disparity of elements which are on show and the constant introduction of objects which are almost always comically out of place (the ubiquitous pots with plants) endow them with a specific visual identity. Some of them are empty, yet others are crammed with not only objects for sale but also with objects of purely personal value to the owners. These windows function as stages, often additionally accentuated by the theatrical way in which they are lit up at night. Owing to their kaleidoscopic quality and their transient nature they possess a specific narrative potential; they tell multilayered stories of the cities and their inhabitants.

Paula Muhr, born 1977 in Belgrade, is a visual artist working mostly with photography. She lives and works in Berlin.

www.paulamuhr.de

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AFTERMATH. Changing Cultural Landscape – Sarajevo

AFTERMATH. Changing Cultural Landscape
Tendencies of engaged post-Yugoslav contemporary photography

12-26 May 2014

City Gallery Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo
(Terezije bb, Centar Skenderija)

After the initial presentation in Ljubljana followed by five shows across the region (Pordenone, Zagreb, Beograd, Cetinje, Bratislava) Aftermath. Changing Cultural Landscape project will be shown in Sarajevo. The exhibition brings together the principal protagonists from the field of engaged contemporary photography active in the territory of the former Yugoslavia following its disintegration (1991–2011).

*The exhibition is dedicated to recently deceased Milena Zarić Maksimović. R.I.P.

Nenad Malešević, Age of Renewal, 2009-2011

Nenad Malešević, 13 January 2006, from the Age of Renewal series, 2006-2011

Domagoj Blažević • Boris Cvjetanović • Qëndrëse Deda • Andrej Đerković • Tomaž Gregorič • Majlinda Hoxha • Astrit Ismaili • Robert Jankuloski • Genc Kadriu • Amer Kapetanović • Silvestar Kolbas • Srđan Kovačević • Borut Krajnc • Nenad Malešević • Goran Micevski • Duško Miljanić • Bojan Mrđenović • Paula Muhr • Oliver Musovik • Vigan Nimani • Ana Opalić • Lazar Pejović • Darije Petković • Ivan Petrović • Marija Mojca Pungerčar • Vojo Radonjić • Jasenko Rasol • Bojan Salaj • Tarik Samarah • Mirjana Stojadinović • Viktor Šekularac • Dejan Vekić • Sandra Vitaljić • Borko Vukosav • Milena Zarić • Ivan Zupanc • Antonio Živkovič

The Aftermath. Changing Cultural Landscape international project is the first regional research and curatorial platform established in order to identify and articulate principal tendencies within the field of contemporary photography in relation to its immediate environment. With the participation of partner organisations from throughout the former Yugoslavia, the project represents an extensive investigation of the effect of large-scale social shifts on the image of the physical and mental environment, and thereby, also on the expression of a number of artists who work in the field of fine art photography.

Aftermath represents a metaphor for the consequences of turbulent events and their mark on the physical environment and on social everyday life. Through their creative efforts, the participating artists address various effects of transition processes that unconditionally and brutally changed the life of the individual, be it the bloody wars in the 1990s and their indirect and direct consequences, radical economic changes that had a significant impact on the general climate, or directly related new social values.

Due to its temporal span, Aftermath provides an interesting confrontation of artistic reflections and expressions of various generations that either experienced the period before the disintegration of the common state or originate from a completely new social context. A 20-year period is short enough to preserve historical memory; thus, with most artists, the new situation is always somewhat juxtaposed with the memory of the recent past. The main starting point of the exhibited works is therefore the relation between the old and the new, the recording of the gradual changes within an individual place and time and the effect of ideologies on the broader social and physical environment.

Aftermath is collaborative project of seven partner organisations from former Yugoslav states (Beograd, Cetinje, Ljubljana, Priština, Sarajevo, Skopje, Zagreb); it is supported by European Cultural Foundation (BIFC), local authorities and Commune di Pordenone.

collegium.omnitask.me

www.photon.si

Partners:
Photon (Ljubljana) / Remont (Belgrade) / Film & Film (Pula) / Collegium Artisticum (Sarajevo) / Stacion (Prishtine) / Narodni muzej Crne Gore (Cetinje) / Contemporary Croatian Photography (Zagreb)

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