Cartographies of Deviations: Mapping Origins and Narratives

Curator: Rossana Mendes Fonesca 

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August 28th - September 20th 2024

Exhibiton opening: Wednesday, August 28th, 20h

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When we speak of origins, home, or heritage, we are not merely referring to a fixed beginning. Instead, we are talking about crucial points from which our stories unfold, points to which we constantly return in the present we inhabit. Throughout our lives, we encounter multiple origins — points that hold answers to questions that often exceed our personal history or identity. These origins become a wellspring from which memories, déjà-vus, and images flow, forming a continuous yet fragmentary narrative that may not always be immediately decipherable but cultivates fertile ground for art.

Cartographies of Deviations: Mapping Origins and Narratives revolves around the theme of deviations, exploring the concept of detours from our origins — our home, birthplace, family, or any foundational point in our lives. These origins are not merely beginnings; they are significant points of departure that shape our journey. And as we revisit these points, it is by remembering them, by reimagining them, that we shed light on our present. The exhibition presents a multiplicity of origins and, thus, different perspectives on deviations.

The artworks presented in this exhibition, though varied in approach, share a common gesture of mapping memories through an anachronic process of invoking the past to illuminate the present. In each piece, the image becomes a living device of memory, guiding the artists back to these original points — whether it be a home, a house, a heritage, a household, or a genealogy. From there, they trace their own steps, sometimes overlapping with those of their ancestors, leading to childhood memories, local narratives, places marked by distress, and new life fictions.

In the works of Glorija Lizde, Izzy Benigno, Lana Stojićević, Stela Mikulin and Tanja Minarik, there is a palpable desire to free the past from its historical rigidity, to rescue, fictionalize, and reimagine it. Whether through the computational fabrication of repressed memories, the creation of an interstitial space where childhood places intersect with sites of migration, the reconfiguration of paths once trodden by ancestors, or the reenactment of local narratives, these works navigate histories that are both collective and individual, past and present, familiar and foreign. Concepts like home, migration, heritage, and origin take on multiple meanings within each work, questioning contemporary understandings of our relationship with genetically inscribed memory and the massive, collective, and individual displacements of a globalized world. These seemingly innocuous relationships profoundly shape the conditions of possibility for our biographies.

Glorija Lizde presents Untitled (Fearless youth). Three self-portraits taken from the Fearless Youth, a work-in-progress since 2020, in which she explores her family's past. The work is based on the eponymous, unpublished autobiography of her grandfather Hasan (1928–2011) in which he recalls, among other things, his experiences in Second World War. His upbringing in a Muslim village in Bosnia and Herzegovina (at the time Yugoslavia) was abruptly interrupted when he, following in the footsteps of his older brothers, joined the fascist Ustashe army in which he served from 1943 to 1945. His father witnessed the First World War, and his son, Glorija's father, was a soldier in the Yugoslav war. Like an unwanted family heirloom, the past is passed down from generation to generation, we are born into it and carry it even if we never witnessed it.

 

Izzy Benigno presents Below the Ground, Only My Body Exists. Originating from Belém do Pará — a strategic point in the Portuguese colonization of the Amazon — the artist intersects her origins with her current home in Aveiro, where streets pay homage to this historic connection. Using 3D mapping, digital manipulation, and AI-generated images, she transforms her current environment by merging it with the myths of her homeland. Inspired by the tale of Cobra Grande, a giant serpent symbolizing the hidden force of nature beneath urban life, this piece reimagines the interplay between nature and urbanization. The serpent embodies both movement and stagnation, representing nature’s persistence in the city. Streets and paths become a hybrid of immigration and history — of what is, what was, and what might be.

 

Lana Stojićević presents Pocket Real Estate, a piece that forms part of her artistic research into the spatial specificities of gender-connoted toys with architectural elements, such as Barbie Houses and Polly Pocket. These toys often contain incredible spatial solutions, breaking architectural norms and revealing unexpected or contradictory relationships between horizontal and vertical space, as well as between interiors and exteriors. Polly Pocket represents a radical miniaturization of architecture, a pocket real estate ‘on the go’, while Barbie houses are characterized by the term ‘dreamhouse’. Toys encourage the so-called pretend play, they become a trigger for imagination, substitutes for what is unattainable in reality. At the same time, they can represent a status symbol or objects of desire. Similarly, the pursuit of sustainable housing solutions remains an elusive dream for many residents, especially in touristic areas like Split, while real estate has become the toys of the wealthy, subject to the cruel games of a wild market.

 

Stela Mikulin presents Archive of the Absent, a piece comprising an object book and video. This work documents the relationship between present and absent elements through the family house, yard, and garden. It examines objects, rooms, and corners captured by personal photographs and recognizes introspective sensibility through them. The need to preserve memory is carried out by the method of mnemonics, which connects data into wholes and gives them an easier-to-remember shape. The purpose of mnemonics is to memorize places that will be used to store information that we want to remember.

 

Tanja Minarik presents I Think It’s a Group of People Flying Kites in the Rain, a digital visual installation. This work draws froma year-long archive of personal photographs, during which her memory of that period faded. Through the analysis of these auto-documentary photographs, the artist collaborated with machine learning algorithms to reinterpret these images and create new narratives. Computer vision tools, DenseCap and YOLO v8, analyzed and described the photos, which were then remixed in the Hydra environment to produce new visual compositions. By challenging subjects such as identity, migration, or belonging, this work seeks to bring out the complexities of coexistence between people, technology, and art, and how creation and research can intertwine to shape new narratives in a constantly evolving world, where different dimensions of reality meet and blend.
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