THIS WORLD OF LIES WILL NEVER BE MY TRUTH

Ana Vujic

THIS WORLD OF LIES WILL NEVER BE MY TRUTH | 2017 | exhibition view

Mechanisms of melancholy and tampering with representations of reality

The Swiss-Serbian artist and art critic Ana Vujic has long been reflecting on social criticism, urbanism and street art as well as scrutinising media representation of socio-economic realities and conflicts. Preferably, she goes about this artistically with found material and coarse instruments, in this particular case working on especially large formats and in stark contrasts of black and white.

Deeper motivations of the artist are a search for truth, the questioning of representation and laying bare sinister states of affairs in the current crises and the corresponding emotions and emotional denials. These interferences and representations of images of a society in crisis address emotions of desperation and hope, hopelessness and anger alike and culminate in an Alfons Mucha-evoking allegory of melancholia as „the West“ tired and passive, wearily fallen asleep in front of a newspaper or TV screen.

In the contemporary art world, Ana Vujic’s is an incredibly refreshed outlook on the role of art in society and a strong statement as to how art can process and transform individual and collective emotions into images, thereby allowing and enabling repressed reactions to take sometimes loud, sometimes melancholy shape.

Sibylle Sunda

THIS WORLD OF LIES WILL NEVER BE MY TRUTH | 2017 | 65 x 56 cm

THIS WORLD OF LIES WILL NEVER BE MY TRUTH

Im Zentrum ihrer malerischen Auseinandersetzung stehen die skizzenhaften Gesichter voller Hoffnung, Erschöpfung oder Angst und das unwirtliche Gefühl. Ana Vujic erzählt nicht von rosigen Zeiten sondern bringt tabusierte Themen des kapitalistischen Auswuchs auf die Wände, Gefühle, die in unserer medial vorgetäuschten Spassgesellschaft keinen Platz finden.

Einige der grossformatigen Szenarien in Tusche realisierte Ana Vujic während ihrem diesjährigen Atelieraufenthalt in Metelkova, einer alternativen Hochburg für Kunst und Subkultur in Ljubljana (Slovenia).

Ana Vujic ergänzt ihre Malereiausstellung mit der fotografischen Serie DEAD MEMORIES und der Drucksammlung ERSCHÖPFTE SCHÖPFER. Beide Buchprojekte erscheinen bei Voltage Press (2017).

Geboren 1981 in Pozerevac (Serbien), seit 1990 in der Schweiz, lebt und arbeitet Ana Vujic in Basel. Sie studierte Kunstgeschichte, Pädagogik und Medienwissenschaften an der Universität Basel und schloss mit einem Master of Arts mit Schwerpunkt auf politsche Kunst und Kunst ausserhalb von Institutionen ab. Die künstlerische Arbeit von Ana Vujic ist stark vom gesellschaftskritischen Drang des Realismus geprägt, ihr Material ist die Gesellschaft selbst.

Interview Ana Vujic mit RSI Cult+
> DARK Lady / italienische Version
> DARK Lady / deutsche Version

DEAD MEMORIES

Ten years have passed since my grandmother’s death; ten years, since I haven’t been back to the little village called VELIKA BRESNICA.

For an entire month, I crossed the country from one end to the other and kept looking for transience. The photographs, mostly shot from a car window, are cursory snapshots, reminders of the country’s diverse periods and upheavals.

In the village, death can always be sensed; the public space is flagged with symbols of the death cult and of mourning rituals: the black headscarf covers the hair of the left-behind wives, black fabric hangs as „Barak“ on the facade, bearing the defuncts‘ name, until the wind eats away the last thread. Death announcements line up on the poles and cover billboard ads, the buried are waiting to be seen one last time.

Here, you will always find a barking dog at the roadside, and sometimes, crosses hanging from the trees.

Ana Vujic, Serbia, 2016

Translated by Sibylle Sunna

THIS WORLD OF LIES WILL NEVER BE MY TRUTH | exhibition view June 2017