Vesna Pavlović, Women in Black, The Circle
Novi Sad, City Square, August 1994
LITTLE WARSAW and Róza El-Hassan are part of Performing 89. States of Disillusion
An Institute of the Present Exhibition
Artists: APSOLUTNO, Balázs Beöthy, Nikola Džafo, Miomir Grujić Fleka, FIA Art Group, Teodor Graur, Róza El-Hassan, Big Hope, Iosif Király, LED ART, LITTLE WARSAW, Dan Mihălțianu, Saša Marković Mikrob, Csaba Nemes, Vesna Pavlović, Lia Perjovschi, Dan Perjovschi, Škart, subREAL, Újlak, Sorin Vreme
Curator: Alina Șerban
On September 7, 2023, The Institute of the Present opened PERFORMING 89. STATES OF DISILLUSION, an exhibition that weaves together some of the intricate storylines of the nineties which emerged in the light of political and social turns occurring after 1989. Engaging with the decade’s legacy and geographically circumscribing its research to the otherwise contrasted historical paths followed by countries like Romania, Hungary and Serbia, PERFORMING 89 traces the intersecting lines of these diverse realities which experienced euphoria and defiance, loss and transformation, war and demystification.
The shocking waves of the transition policies that followed the implosion of the old political order in the Eastern Bloc, the visible paradoxical situations generated by economic instability, the state resistance to reforms, and the civil society protests that punctured the 1990s called for an immediate appropriation of those estranged and polyphonic realities in the artistic practices of the decade.
PERFORMING 89 looks at the complex interactions and connections between art and society during the 1990s, at the poignant stories of recent transformation brought into discussion by artists, featuring a diverse range of medium-based artworks that, retrospectively, lie between documentary and subjective artistic investigation. At the centre of the exhibition is the thoughtful concern of artists for the circumstances of their time, their proximity with the public space.
PERFORMING 89. STATES OF DISILLUSION proposes to create a dialogue between works that have subjected the unprecedented shifts of the 1990s, recollecting the atmosphere and the dynamic of the times, however neither being revisionist or nostalgic, but rather trying to understand the sense of what was missed or lost during those years, of what was forgotten.
PERFORMING 89 includes concerts, film screenings, workshops, guided tours and an associated digital publication as part of the exhibition programme.
IP—The Institute of the Present is a research and an artist and theory resource platform in the field of visual and performing culture conceived by Ștefania Ferchedău and Alina Șerban.
The “Uncensored Act” programme (2021–2023), in which the exhibition is presented, dwells on the idea of community, collective action, collaboration and solidarity in the spirit of shared values, with a route that is triggered by the history of Timișoara in the 1989 context, connected regionally and internationally through the proposed artistic content.
Venue :
FABER
Splaiul Peneș Curcanul 4–5, Timișoara, Romania
September 7 – October 22, 2023
Opening: September 7, 2023, 18:00
Visiting hours: WED–SUN, 12:00–20:00
