MCAM, as part of the project Laboratory of the Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries, is organizing a workshop and lecture by independent curator and researcher Jelena Vesić. The lecture, titled “Solidarity in Time: Images of History in Contemporary Art,” will take place on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, at 6:00 PM at the House of the King’s Guard.
In this workshop, designed as a composite of lecture segments and collective reflections, we will explore images of history in contemporary art, what we call solidarity in time, grappling with the key issues that confront those who try to fight reactionary historical revisionism, amnesia, and the techno-psycho-politics of the super-present.
How can we think about history in the present moment, beyond the teleological and linear understanding of time, beyond apologetic and nostalgic returns to a “better past”? How do contemporary artists, theorists, and curators explore, remember, and actualize emancipatory histories, actions of transnational networks of political solidarity, and cultural exchange programs? Is it possible to express “solidarity in time” beyond commemoration, beyond reconstruction and repetition, but rather as a source of imagination and projection?
Jelena Vesić (PhD) is an independent curator, writer, editor, and lecturer. She is active in publishing, research, and exhibition practices that intertwine political theory and contemporary art. Vesić is co-editor of Red Thread magazine (Istanbul), a member of the Mezosfera advisory board (Budapest), and president of the AICA Serbia Association of Art Critics.
Vesić has curated many exhibitions, including the Lecture Performance (MoCA, Belgrade, and Koelnischer Kunstverein, 2009/10), as well as the collective exhibition project Political Practices of (post-)Yugoslav Art (2009), which critically investigates concepts and narratives from the history of art in Yugoslavia after its dissolution. Her recent exhibition In Collectivization (MG, Ljubljana, 2022) addresses feminist interventions in art history narratives about avant-garde artistic collectives of the 20th century.
The Laboratory of the Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries is a project by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro, initiated in March 2022 by a team of curators and conservators: Anita Ćulafić, Marina Čelebić, Nada Baković, and Natalija Vujošević.
The project’s activities revolve around the art collection of non-aligned countries, aiming to develop contemporary research and archival artistic practices and implement them into the institution’s artistic and educational programs. It seeks to connect this collection (which bears witness to an important international historical context) with the international academic and artistic community. The intention is to continuously develop activities that contribute to historicizing and reinterpreting the collection, as well as renewing the international connections and exchanges the collection has fostered.