Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17685/Peristil.59.11
Exhibition as Social Intervention: Annual SCCA-Sarajevo Exhibitions: “Meeting Point” (1997), “Beyond the Mirror” (1998), “Under Construction” (1999)
Amila Puzić
orcid.org/0000-0003-1645-8078
; Džemal Bijedić University of Mostar, Faculty of Education, Department of Art History
Abstract
Heterogeneous art practices which emerged in Bosnia and Herzegovina in late 1990s must be considered primarily within the particular economic, political, social and cultural framework. While the emancipatory potential of international critical practices of the 1990s was frequently embedded in the activity of art institutions, thus contributing to the dissemination of cultural influences, similar endeavours in Bosnia and Herzegovina did not share identical starting points or experiences. Therefore the phenomenon of affirmation of independent curatorial and artistic collectives, joined in NGOs as basic creative units, cannot be historically associated to art practices in pre-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the war, in 1996, Soros Center for Contemporary Art was founded in Sarajevo as one of the last to be
opened in a network of some twenty centres in Central and East European countries which housed the Open Society Fund. Between 1997 and 2000, SCCA Sarajevo organized three annual exhibitions: “Meeting Point” (1997), “Beyond the Mirror” (1998) and “Under Construction” (1999). These exhibitions, in the broadest sense, indicated a shift in art production and affirmation of social and political aspects of artistic engagement. They marked a significant change of exhibition practices, in which traditional forms were replaced by “new” art practices. Site-specific projects represented one of the key strategies for the reconquest of war-devastated public space, while “new” art practices in public space were a priori aimed against institutionalization of art which occurred in the post-war period.
Keywords
public space; exhibition; site-specific; participation; interaction
Hrčak ID:
179000
URI
Publication date:
1.3.2017.
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