Nomad and Maistra Collection organise Nomad Arts Weekend Experience at Grand Park Hotel Rovinj to raise funds that support artists projects. This micro-site is dedicated to presenting the pop-up exhibition projects created on this occasion, raise awareness for some of the most talented artists in our region, build on cultural projects that matter and essentially enter a cultural discourse that is so necessary today.
Jasmina Cibic and Šejla Kamerić: editions of solidarity & care
Tresor, Grand Park Hotel
October – November 2023
Lovro Artuković: Underworld Party
Tresor, Grand Park Hotel
June – August 2023
Book a complimentary private viewing at the concierge
Contact us for the price list: nomad.funding@gmail.com
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Jasmina Cibic and Šejla Kamerić: editions of solidarity & care
Tresor, Grand Park Hotel
October – November 2023
Text contributions: Excerpt from Marijana Schneider’s essay The Most Favoured Nation, published by Hatje Cantz and Museum der Moderne Salzburg for Jasmina Cibic and excerpt from Natalija Paunić’s inaugural speech at Nomad Arts Weekend x Fundraising Dinner for Šejla Kamerić
The Maistra Collection in Rovinj is one of the most important collections of contemporary art in Croatia and Central Europe. It is being systematically built up with artworks by artists belonging to the Middle European and Mediterranean circle, intended to enrich the premises of the hotels Monte Mulini, Lone, Adriatic and Eden. The presented artists include Abdelkader Benchamma, Jasmina Cibic, Dušan Džamonja, Igor Eškinja, Massimo Uberti, Ivana Franke, Davor Sanvicenti, Sofija Silvia, Marko Tadić, Zlatan Vehabović and Silvio Vujičić.
Artist Jasmina Cibic with her artworks Europa and Political Decadence, and Šejla Kamerić with her artwork Hooked are presented at Tresor, Grand Park Hotel Rovinj during autumn 2023.
Jasmina Cibic’s Europa is a series of four silk-screen prints presenting the allegory of Europa and the power architectures framing and describing it throughout history. The work retraces the allegorical representation of Europa as described in Cesare Ripa’s book of emblems titled lconologia (1593/1603). In this classical source, which was used widely throughout the Renaissance period and was highly influential in the formation of the classical canon (and subsequently European identity), Ripa describes Europa as “a lady in rich robes, surrounded by sacks of grain, grapes, crowns and sceptres, a horse among trophies and arms, a book with an owl upon it, palettes and pencils, and musical instruments”. Here, Europa is stripped of all her attributes, and floats falling in the space retracing the choreography of the female body as used by patriarchal power verticals of the past. Europa here calls upon her own reinvention, as hopes and ideals are not static. She underscores how the conundrum of nation building is influenced not only by external political forces but also by the conscious design of the creative capital. Europa is floating alongside extrapolated symbols of European cultural representation – always vertical, always palatial: pillars drawn from the architectures that went to represent parliaments, world expositions and other moments of state scenography.
Jasmina Cibic’s monumental photographic artwork Political Decadence showing a young girl with a marching drum inscribed with the words “Political Decadence”. In the twentieth century, decadence became an ideologically significant term, used by fascist and other right-wing movements as an instrument for mobilizing the masses and dividing society. By portraying a young girl-a symbol of the future generation-Cibic draws attention to the dangers of the current resurgence in antidemocratic rhetoric.
Šejla Kamerić’s art is a sort of agent, or a mirror, metaphorically speaking. Her works actually become complete once we react to them: their final element is found in the social context, in our verbal or emotional response, our understanding of the work and our reading. For this reason, even when they seem to be straightforward in their aesthetic, her works are always multilayered, offering themselves for various interpretations that could all be true and coexist at the same time.
In her Hooked series, from which one piece is on display at Grand Park Hotel Rovinj, Šejla takes a hand-knitted element typical for households in the Balkans and blows it out of its usual proportions. The original object is colloquially called milje, which comes from the word milieu, and its purpose is merely decorative, commonly placed around the house, on table-tops and cabinets. Šejla opens the discussion about knitting and weaving through this object, as typically feminine practices that have become known as lowbrow crafts of not much consequence. She twists that narrative by questioning the notions of free time and leisure that obscure the possible politics behind the traditional craft, pointing out the time intentionally spent on “unimportant” things around the house. Šejla sees a possibility for female liberation in the traditional social construct through these acts of object-making and decoration that the patriarchal system can only place in the category of kitsch. On the other hand, through its strong physical presence, the piece represents an unusual obstacle in space. Instead of an obvious monumentality that would normally involve heavy surfaces or opaque materiality, Hooked pieces possess a special kind of monumentality that involves tactics and transformation rather than mass. They are textile objects that shift shapes, can form into a ball and expand across any surface, resembling, to an extent, spider webs. Interestingly, the reference to spiders brings the narrative back to the feminine: to thinking about Louise Bourgeois and her own allegories to arachnids, as symbols of clever feminine adaptability and wit.
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Jasmina Cibic is a London based artist, born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She works in film, sculpture, performance and installation to explore soft power. Through unfolding the complex entanglements of art, gender and state power, the artist encourages viewers to consider the strategies employed in the construction of national culture. She represented Slovenia at the 55th Venice Biennial. Her solo shows include: macLyon, Museum Sztuki Lodz, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, CCA Glasgow, Phi Foundation Montreal, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Aarhus 2017, Esker Foundation Calgary, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade and Ludwig Museum Budapest. Her works in public and private collections include: Art Collection Telekom, macLyon, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, Kunstmuseum Krefeld, Museum Sztuki Lodz, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Vujičić Collection Zagreb, and Mihael Šutalo Collection Copenhagen.
W: https://jasminacibic.org/
IG: @cibicjasmina
Šejla Kamerić is a visual artist whose practice involves film, photography, objects, drawings and installations. She has received widespread acclaim for the poignant intimacy and social commentary that have become the main elements of her work. Taking up the subjects that arise from non-linear historical narratives, Kamerić places her focus on the politics of memory, modes of resistance in human life and consequential idiosyncrasies of women’s struggle. By insisting on empathy as the founding communicative mechanism between herself, her subjects and spectators, Kamerić warns of, and at the same time creates, places of power and political arenas. Recently, Kamerić has exhibited at the 6. Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg; Manifesta 14, Prishtina; National Gallery, North Macedonia; Kunsthaus Dresden; New Tertyakov Gallery, Moscow; GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; Sharjah Art foundation – Sharjah Art Museum. His works in private and public collections include: TATE Modern London, MACBA Barcelona, Kontakt Collection Vienna, Vehbi Koç Foundation Istanbul, Art Telekom Collection Germany, Antonić Cerin Collection Zagreb.
W: https://sejlakameric.com/
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Lovro Artuković: Underworld Party
Tresor, Grand Park Hotel
June – August 2023
Text contribution: Jelena Tamindžija Donnart
The Maistra Collection in Rovinj is one of the most important collections of contemporary art in Croatia and Central Europe. It is being systematically built up with artworks by artists belonging to the Middle European and Mediterranean circle, intended to enrich the premises of the hotels Monte Mulini, Lone, Adriatic and Eden. The presented artists include Abdelkader Benchamma, Jasmina Cibic, Dušan Džamonja, Igor Eškinja, Massimo Uberti, Ivana Franke, Davor Sanvicenti, Sofija Silvia, Marko Tadić, Zlatan Vehabović and Silvio Vujičić.
This summer, at the Tresor venue of the Grand Park Hotel, the guest is Lovro Artuković with his temporary art installation Underworld Party, produced by the Zagreb-based Nomad platform, which has participated in the creation of the art collection for the Maistra Collection.
The feeling of the underground world is additionally emphasized by the use of ultraviolet light, primarily focused on drawings in the charcoal technique on paper. This muted environment is a platform for the participation of guests who become participants in the creation of the installation. Instructed by the artist to dress in black and white to make the experience under the lights more powerful, visitors take on the role of ghosts who roam the studio in a haze of tobacco smoke. The creation of a mystical impression is further emphasized by the fables presented by the works displayed on the wall. Artuković reaches for the inventory of the Greek mythology, primarily stories related to the underworld ruled by God Hades.
Seven drawings, which include 5 earlier drawings and 2 new works created specifically for the Grand Hotel Park Trezor, represent the author’s efforts to copy the masterpieces of Old Masters, among which Rembrandt, Corot, and Titian stand out. Predominantly from the Baroque and Pre-Raphaelite periods, the works thematize suffering, the destinies the characters have determined themselves through their actions, the eternal verdicts and the execution of punishment. The artist Artuković struggled with the choice of his topic at the beginning, saying: „When I started the first drawing, I realized that despite my presumption that I had enough experience in my profession, I was still childishly naive. The time that had to be invested into the making of a faithful copy indefinitely postponed the date of the planned party into the future. The desire to organize it also gradually waned. Nevertheless, I continued the work, even though I had a feeling I was doing something totally absurd. Why on Earth am I wasting time on copies? To have someone nickname me ‘Rembrandt’? And will this concept survive, if there is no party? I know that a ‘professional artist’ would leave this tedious job to someone else to do it for him, and he would take up something more important during that time. But working on these copies I began to enjoy a certain lack of sense and purpose of this enterprise. Moreover, I did not want to give up the pleasure: first, the work with charcoal and second the graduad ‘entering’ into the original work used as a template. In the end, this experience resembled a descent into the underworld; if not a raucous party, still a way of conversing with those who no longer walk the surface of the Earth.“
It is possible that the feeling of embarking on this new subject in which after a while he could not find meaning or purpose turned into a raison d’être per se and that he found satisfaction in this, in “entering” the minds of the great Old Masters, with the accompanying feeling that he had no idea or direction in his creation.
The drawing of Sisyphus, based on a painting by Titian (1548 or 1549), located at the Prado Museum in Madrid, shows the embodiment of the common phrase Sisyphean task. Titian depicts the Greek hero Sisyphus suffering his punishment by carrying a large stone on his shoulders. Punished by Hades for cheating death twice, the god of the underworld himself condemned him to eternal futile labor of carrying a boulder that would roll back every time he neared the top of the hill. In today’s language, precisely the work that seems futile and endless is called a Sisyphean task. Two other Greek anti-heroes, Ixion and Tantalus, are placed next to Sisyphus.
Based on a painting by the Baroque Spanish painter, Jusepe de Ribera, from 1632, the central motif depicts Ixion serving his sentence for the murder of his father-in-law Deioneus, but also for his attempt to seduce Zeus’s wife Hera. The figure of Ixion is shown in a crouched position with tensed muscles beneath which is his tormentor, probably a satyr, with distinctive horns and pointed ears. Next to Ixion and Sisyphus is Tantalus, a drawing based on a painting by the Italian Baroque painter Gioacchino Assereto. Like the other two anti-heroes of classical mythology, Tantalus was condemned for betraying the trust of the gods on Mount Olympus, for stealing nectar, otherwise the food of the gods, for revealing their secrets, but most of all for his gruesome crime of dismembering his son Pelops, whose body parts he offered at the banquet of gods to test their supposed omniscience. His punishment, from which we use the term Tantalus’ torment today, signifies the inability to use something within our reach. Thus, in Greek mythology, Tantalus served eternal punishment placed in the water and surrounded by low branches full of hanging fruit. However, when he reached to drink water, it would disappear and the branches would move up, where he could not reach them.
The four remaining drawings are related to the themes of unsuccessful and tragic love, whose sequence begins with perhaps the most famous love couple of Greek mythology, Orpheus and Eurydice. Based on a painting from 1861 by the French romantic painter known for his dreamlike landscapes, the drawing Orpheus Leads Eurydice from the Underworld manages to capture the melancholic romanticized world of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Orpheus, who played the lyre most beautifully, was desperate after his beloved Eurydice died after being bitten by a snake and decided to rescue her, which he was granted, on the condition that he was not allowed to turn his back during the entire journey to the outside world. As Orpheus heard Eurydice’s footsteps less and less distinctly along the way, he turned to check for her presence, after which she was unfortunately taken back to the depths of the underworld, which marked the final tragic end of their love story.
The two adjacent drawings do not depict an honest love story, but the abduction of Persephone by the god Hades, who now makes her the ruler of the underworld as his wife. The first drawing made after Rembrandt depicts the dramatic scene of the abduction of Persephone by Hades where she is dragged into the underworld leaving her desperate mother Demeter in the outside world. The desperate mother wanders the world in search of Persephone, leaving Mount Olympus and thereby preventing all plants from growing on Earth. Zeus then sends Hermes to the underworld to find Persephone and bring her to her mother, whereby they make a deal that the kidnapped ruler of the underworld would spend six months with Hades in the underworld, and six months in the outside world with her mother. The meeting of Demeter and Persephone, which is shown in the drawing made after Frederic Leighton, is thus interpreted as the embodiment of spring, flowering and plant growth.
Another tragic love story with many victims is depicted in the last drawing, based on a painting by John William Waterhouse. For altogether 50 daughters of the king of Libya, a marriage was set with 50 sons of the king of Egypt, his twin brother. On the very wedding day, the girls killed all 50 husbands, for which they were eternally punished by carrying pitchers with water and pouring them into a large jug from which water was constantly leaking.
After creating these 7 drawings inspired by works and tragic fables from Greek mythology, their author Lovro Artuković tries to convey the feeling that accompanied him in their making through the presentation of the installation. The feeling of entering an underground world in a certain way, a world where one is not quite sure what to expect, while surrounded by stories from books and old pictures. The remains of food, drinks and cigarettes from dinner on the table covered with a white tablecloth seem to embody the Greek sense for the story “in medias res”, where the visitor is thrown into the center of the story, into a space where half the action has already happened and where he himself completes the story he observes, i.e. the installation, by becoming its participant.
Lovro Artuković is a Berlin based figurative painter and graphic artist. He was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1959, where he graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb. He was teaching there until moving to Berlin in 2001, where he still lives and works. His figurative paintings, drawings and graphics tap into contemporary urban culture with immediate intimacy and lash imagery. His most notable exhibitions include: Museum of Modern Art Zagreb, Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle Berlin, Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, and Art Pavilion Zagreb. Works in public and private collections include: Albertina Modern Vienna, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Museum of Modern Art Split, Lauba Collection Zagreb, Antonić Cerin Collection Zagreb, Braun Collection Zürich, Boros Collection Berlin, Čičak Collection, Mihael Šutalo Collection Copenhagen, and Neda Young Collection New York.
W: http://lovro-artukovic.com/en/index.html
IG: @lovroartukovic