The 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts
7. 6.–29. 9. 2019
The 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts will be curated by the Slavs and Tatars art collective. It should not be overlooked that the central role of the curator as the selector of the works presented at the 32nd Biennial edition entitled Birth as Criterion acquired a chain mechanism in which the choice was left entirely to artists. As Slavs and Tatars participated in this biennial, Birth as Criterion in a very special way influenced the design of the forthcoming Biennial.
The collective’s extensive editorial output, complex use of visual language and voracious research practice makes them a particularly resonant fit with the history of the Biennial and its contemporary role. Slavs and Tatars is an internationally renowned art collective devoted to an area East of the former Berlin Wall and West of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. Since its inception in 2006, the collective has shown a keen grasp of polemical issues in society, clearing new paths for contemporary discourse via a wholly idiosyncratic form of knowledge production, including popular culture, spiritual and esoteric traditions, oral histories, modern myths, as well as scholarly research. The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, publications and lecture-performances. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Salt in Istanbul, Vienna Secession, Kunsthalle Zurich and Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, among others. Slavs and Tatars has published ten books to date, including Wripped Scripped (Hatje Cantz, 2018) on language politics, Friendship of Nations (2nd edition, Book Works, 2017) on the unlikely rapport between Iran and Poland between the 17th and 21st centuries, as well as Molla Nasreddin (currently in its 2nd edition with I.B Tauris, 2017), a translation of the legendary Azerbaijani satirical periodical. Their focus on Eurasia challenges our often times one-dimensional way of seeing relationships between science, religion, power and identity. We saw them in Ljubljana in the Systems and Patterns show in 2012. The exhibition was curated by Nevenka Šivavec, MGLC Director.
For their curatorial début, Slavs and Tatars intend to re-engage with the origins of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts. “After a thaw in the idea of medium-specificity over the last 20 odd years, we would like to refocus on ‘the graphic’ today, both in a literal but also strategic sense. In an age of mashed up futures and scrambled pasts, the role of the graphic in public discourses and polemics seems particularly relevant today.”
The focal point of the exhibition of the 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts will be the idea of satire as a distinctly visual language, with the ‘graphic’ that marks the history the Biennial being understood and questioned in the broad field of the expressive, uninhibited, even lurid. Is each joke, as George Orwell maintained, a tiny revolution? Or does laughter and satire deflate the pressures and tension which could otherwise lead to political upheaval? Slavs and Tatars look to humour as both strategy and content. The visual glut of our times has spawned new aesthetic languages whose messages and discourse we often find distasteful. Though the graphic arts and satire each have their own distinct specifics, they both claim to speak for and to the people.
Slavs and Tatars: Molla Nasreddin, 2011. installation view of the exhibition Systems and Patterns, 2012 at MGLC.
Photo: Jaka Babnik. MGLC Archive.
NATAŠA BERK: 1ST UNLIMITED EDITION
2. 4.–19. 5. 2019
Opening:
2 April, at 7 pm
Švicarija
The exhibition is part of the year-long programme of Švicarija, which in 2019 focuses on the analysis of the state of independent journalism and the right of the public to information in pursuit of the slogan community, art and nature. The participating artists question the credibility of images and their meanings at a time of the oversaturation with visual impulses and analyse the ambiguity of media messages on the world wide web.
The spatial intervention by Nataša Berk and the group of artists at Švicarija presents their diverse visual production, which usually takes place in the virtual space of the world wide web and social networks. On this occasion, it has moved into a physical space. Together, they explore the phenomenology of the image within public circulation and its impact on the perception of reality. In ironic ways, they address the norms of the advertising industry, the tendencies of the mass media, voyeurism and the social convention of the individual’s appearance. Thus, works devoted to the consideration of the nature of the image in everyday life are presented as part of the exhibition. In such a way, photographs, videos and collages open up the questions of understanding visual culture in an era when the public space has become saturated with contents and images, questions about the manipulation of the image and the ambivalence of its meanings.
Curator: Miha Colner
Photo: Nataša Berk.
EVENING WITH MANCA KOŠIR: STORIES ABOUT BOOKS AND PEOPLE
Tuesday, May 14, at 6 pm
On the second Tuesday of May, on 14 May, LOVE will colour the subject of debate, starting at 6 pm. Manca’s guests will be television host Ana Tavčar Pirkovič, PhD, with the book by D. Ladinsky Love Poems from God and Željko Čurić, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, who is fascinated by the work of F. M. Dostoevsky. Saxophonist Vida Vatovec will add a musical touch to the evening.
ANIMATION WORKSHOP
Sunday, May 19, 11.00–14.00,
Švicarija
After a brief viewing of Švicarija and the exhibition by Nataša Berk, 1st Unlimited Edition, we will create a video in the world of pixelation by using our own bodies. Mentor Jelena Dragutinovič will lead us through the process.
This workshop is the last in the series of animation workshops during this school year, which are run by the Slon Society in cooperation with MGLC.
Suitable for young people aged 8+. Free of charge.
Obligatory booking; https://bit.ly/2vl5BqZ
ANNOUNCING THE 33RD LJUBLJANA BIENNIAL OF GRAPHIC ARTS: CRACK UP – CRACK DOWN
7. 6.–29. 9. 2019
Curator:
art collective Slavs and Tatars
35 artists on 9 venues in Ljubljana
Crack Up – Crack Down will take an expansive view of the genre of satire today, featuring works by historical and contemporary international artists, as well as interventions by activists, new media polemicists, performances by stand-up comedians, and others. For the 33rd edition of the Biennial, Slavs and Tatars consider ‘the graphic’ not as a medium, but as an agency. They question how graphic language engenders a form of infra-politics via irony and ridicule as a particularly resilient and contemporary form of critique. Purported to speak truth to power, satire has proven itself to be a petri dish in a world of post-truth bacteria
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POVEZUJEM/TIVOLI CREATIVE CIRCLE
The PovezujeM/Tivoli Creative Circle
programme, which is organised by the museums around Tivoli Park, will take place again during the summer holidays.
Two time-frames are available:
8–12 July and 26–30 August,
from 8 am to 4 pm.
Further details will be available soon!
You can pre-book your place by writing to: petra.derganc@mglc-lj.si
Part of the circle: National Museum of Slovenia, Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of Contemporary History, National Gallery of Slovenia and International Centre of Graphic Arts.
SYMPOSIUM ON THE EXHIBITION JAPAN, YUGOSLAVIA AND THE BIENNIAL OF GRAPHIC ARTS: DOCUMENTS OF COLLABORATION
Japan, Yugoslavia and the Biennial of Graphic Arts: Documents of Collaboration
Wednesday, 15 May, 14.00–18.00,
International Centre of Graphic Arts
Symposium timeline
13:45 Introductory Speech
14:00 Gregor Dražil: An Outline of Collaboration between Japan and Slovenia in the Area of Printmaking
*14:40 Bert Winther-Tamaki: The Wood Aesthetic of the “Creative Prints” Movement of Japan, 1945 to 1965
15:20 Wiktor Komorowski: From Washi to Politics: Printmaking and the Cold War Japonisme
16:00–16:20 Break
16:20 Marjeta Ciglenečki: Forma Viva in Slovenia and Japanese Artists
17:00 Noriaki Sangawa: The Japanese Art Group Ryu and Its Collaboration with the Slovenian Moderna galerija and the Biennial of Graphic Arts
Visiting lecture
*Bert Winther-Tamaki: What Happens to Contemporary Art Made in Japan When Exhibited Outside of Japan?
*The lecture will take place on Monday, 13 May, at 18:00 at the Faculty of Arts, room 343. The lecture is co-organised by the Department of Art History.
The symposium will be held in English.
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Photo: Jaka Babnik. MGLC Archive.
The Family fold’r
Dear families, you are kindly invited to explore the MGLC gallery!
We have again prepared the Family fold’r for you, which you receive free of charge when you purchase a family ticket to view the exhibition.
This time, some curious cards are waiting for you inside, and they need to find their places in the gallery with your help and the help of your children.
Good luck!
opening:
Friday, March 22, at 6 pm
22. 3.–19. 5. 2019
The exhibition is made up of two sections. The first, bearing the title Photographic Images and Matter: Japanese Prints of the 1970s, is dedicated to Japanese printmaking of the 1970s and was organised by the Japan Foundation, while the second, the documentary section, is entitled Japan, Yugoslavia and the Biennial of Graphic Arts: Documents of Collaboration and has been prepared by the International Centre of Graphic Arts.
The travelling exhibition Photographic Images and Matter, with a selection of the most representative artists, presents the orientations within Japanese printmaking of the 1970s, which was the golden age of the print medium in Japan. The curator of the exhibition Kyoji Takizawa has made an attractive selection of artists, who have received many awards within the international arena and form the core of the modernist and avant-garde scene of the 1970s.
The documentary exhibition Japan, Yugoslavia and the Biennial of Graphic Arts: Documents of Collaboration, on the other hand, illuminates one of the many socio-artistic chapters tied to the history of the Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana. Through the selection of pictorial, archival, photographic and other material, it aims to show the communication between the geographically and politically disparate countries as part of an ambitious international art event like the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts. Exhibition authors are Nevenka Šivavec and Gregor Dražil.
The exhibition is accompanied by an international symposium under the same title, taking place in the month of May.
Exhibition design: Ivian Kan Mujezinović and Mina Fina.
Tetsuya Noda: Diary, September 11, '68 (woodcut and silkscreen).
