EXHIBITIONS 2023
Playful Futures
January 23rd - February 1st 2023
Playful Futures is a project that, with the help of an online live-action-role play game, encourages participants to rethink the economic foundations of society. We are implementing the project in cooperation with Edgeryders and the University of Aalborg. In November 2022, we published a public call for illustrators, during which we were looking for ideas and scenarios of how the coastal cities of the Mediterranean will look as a result of climate change and sea level rise. In Prostor, between January 23 and February 1, you can visit the exhibition of illustrations that received the votes of a jury composed of members of project partners, as well as three illustrations that received awards: Agata Lučić, "Air rib rib" Betty Stojnić, "Dead Channel" Katarina Matković, "Water Clock" The exhibition was created in the framework of the project Playful Futures, supported by COESO project (Horizon2020 programme).
Mia Štark: New Human Comedy
February 3rd - March 3rd 2023
Mia Štark’s New Human Comedy is a triptych consisting of three works: “NOT EVERY DISEASE MAKES YOU SICK”, “Touch / As little as possible / Departure”, and “With IT, I can DO EVERYTHING!”. Štark created the works in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic - a time which we have already begun to observe from a distance. The artist was inspired by the closures, media coverage, and instructions which became part of our daily lives to create numerous performances which are captured in video as well as graphics, photo books (a collection of anti-postcards) and text including poetry. Utilizing mass media formats, Mia Štark uses the media context to overemphasize its elements to the border with the absurd, thus bringing a newly created situation into the comic domain. “Not every disease makes you sick” is modeled after a television program reporting about the life of the artist given the current circumstances as well as the meaning of our actions and expressions more generally. “NOT EVERY DISEASE MAKES YOU SICK” is a gentle and mild form of video satire that presents an acceptance for the cultural and artistic situation as it stands today and before which the pandemic has brought even more challenges. From this Sisyphean moment, we continue to the next work which invites us to be present in the moment, read, watch, and listen carefully. It is necessary to pay close attention. The work “Touch / As little as possible / Departure” starts off with the numerous instructions and slogans we have followed in recent years. An interactive video reminiscent of guided meditation videos asks the viewer to participate, listen, watch, remember, and observe. The washing of hands turns into a common dance while poems on graphic sheets of paper invite careful reading and thoughtful viewing. Mia uses a highly personal approach in the graphics by combining her personal experiences and key words from the mentioned instructions into haiku poetry. Finally, “With IT, I can DO EVERYTHING!” is a continuation of the idea of cleanliness from the previous work. The video satire advertises a product which is simultaneously banal and timeless but which became by chance a crucial object for modern everyday life. The work is completed by a series of photographs shown in the form of a creative photobook, so-called anti-postcards. The author “captures” in her photographs the small details that she encounters in her environment like the glitches which surround us daily but which we often do not give any attention to. The banalities of daily life were further amplified during the pandemic period. The artist tackles the seriousness in art and daily life and collects the absurd from her own environment. The absurd is portrayed most directly on the wall of photographs entitled “The Circle of Life.” The artistry and performance in Mia’s work complement each other. Performativity is often in the background of Mia’s graphic works. The photographs presented in the exhibition act as their own “performance.” In the domain of a true comedy, New Human Comedy is a cathartic report of the times in which we live. It is a display of banality but also coexistence with it because sometimes refuge is found, precisely, in laughter. Mia Štark (b. 1992, Osijek) is an interdisciplinary artist who expresses herself through media including drawing, graphics, contemporary dance, performance, and video. She graduated from the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek, Department of Fine Arts, with a focus on graphics. She also holds an BA degree in contemporary dance at the Department of Dance at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. Mia actively participates on the art and performance stage and her works have been shown in Zagreb, Osijek, Varaždin, Berlin, Taipei, and Cluj-Napoca among others. In 2021 her work “NOT EVERY DISEASE MAKES YOU SICK” received an award by the jury at the exhibition “They are Here” in Vinkovci and received recognition at a juried group exhibition GRISIA youth. Štark works as an independent artist. She is a member of the Osijek HDLU and Association of Professional Dance Artists “PULS.” The exhibition is part of the “Spaces of Play” program led by the Platform “Culture Hub Croatia” in conjunction with the creative hub Prostor. The program is financed by the Kultura nova Foundation and the Republic of Croatia’s Ministry of Culture and Media. The work of the Platform “Culture Hub Croatia” is supported by the National Foundation. Curator: Jasmina Šarić Technical Setup: Mia Štark, Marino Vukasović
Milka Delibašić: Beautiful Silence
April 14th - May 8th 2023
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With the exhibition "Beautiful Silence", Milka Delibašić successfully combines various aspects of her artistic practice – visual arts, performance and technology. The starting point of the exhibition is the need for a moment of silence and the conditions it causes, because silence is never completely peaceful. In the silence, many conditions appear that remain hidden in the noise of everyday life. Silence forces us to listen to what is inside us. Working intuitively based on instinct and process, Milka Delibašić often uses past experiences in her works, either personal or someone else's - often traumatic. These become the basis for further, deeply procedural work that often takes its final form in ambiental installation. In this construction made up of numerous screens, the motif of the body prevails. The body as such in Milka's works is not a symbol, nor is it a subject. Rather, it is a means of expressing inner states, since the experience of that body belongs to everyone. The body possesses exceptional performative potential and it is often her own body with which, like any other artistic means, she creates personal poetics, paying special attention to the feeling of the body's movement through space. Faced with silence, inner states are manifested by movements in an undefined space in which she places her own body. Through manipulation of the image, the artist brings it to the limits of abstraction. Emotions form aestheticized movements. The body thus becomes a medium for expressing inner realities. Its vague, blurred contours are completely reduced to emotion. In contrast to these videos in an undefined space, the central work clearly shows a location dominated by the element of water, a symbol of cleansing and new life - perseverance and overcoming. As an antithesis to expressive shots, entering the water represents calmness and evokes the transformation that only happens through extreme presence. Although in her work she often refers to the relationship between images and media, with this exhibition Milka remains at the intuitive and sensory level without encroaching on theoretical frameworks. While in some of her previous works (To Whom My Dreams Belong) she uses screens to evoke fragments of memory, here they show the layerings of the evoked emotion. This abundance of digital imagery that constantly surrounds us along with the focus on the visual and external are interests that occupy her. She was also greatly influenced by her stay in China, where she spent several years until 2020. The omnipresence of images that we have become so accustomed to are hyper potent in this exhibition. External visuality is used to present what is inside. The setup of the exhibition destabilizes the space by introducing the virtual into the physical. The numerous screens that make up the ambiental video installation communicate with and build on each other. In this way, she creates a landscape composed of several levels of space - the space of the body in the video, the space of the screen, and the physical space of the gallery where they are located. In this exhibition, she adds another dimension - the mirror floor where the images continue to multiply. In this way, it destroys the basic assumptions of static space and even temporality. The visitor becomes an integral part of that landscape, and participates in it through immersion in emotion. With their movements, their reflection, and even their very presence and observation, the visitor becomes an actor in the installation. Individual feeling thus becomes the point of contact - the basis for identification and sympathy. Milka Delibašić (Nikšić, 1989) works in different artistic media such as drawings, video installations and performances. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje, study program in Graphics. She completed her master's degree in Spatial - Multimedia Art at the Faculty of Intermedia at the Chinese Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, China. She represented Montenegro at the Youth Biennale Mediterranea 17 in Milan (2015). She is the winner of the "Petar Lubarda" state award (2018) and a finalist of the "Milčik" award for young visual artists in Montenegro (2021). She participated in numerous workshops and group exhibitions in Montenegro and abroad. The exhibition is part of the "Spaces of Empowerment" program that the "Culture Hub Croatia" Platform is implementing in 2023 as part of the Prostor creative hub. The exhibition is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The work of the Platform "Culture Hub Croatia" is supported by the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society and the Kultura nova Foundation. Special thanks: HULU, QueerANarchive and Mavena. Curator: Jasmina Šarić Technical Setup: Milka Delibašić, Marino Vukasović
Darko Aleksovski: Never Not in Love
May 12th - June 6th 2023
Never Not in Love is an interdisciplinary and participatory art project composed of two separate works: Love Letters to Loneliness and Waves, complementing each other in an exhibition setup. Love Letters to Loneliness originate from intimate confessions in a letter form, without a possibility of them being chronologically located, and are offered to the audience to be read with the opportunity given to the reader to enter into a personal world with emotional issues and situations difficult to translate into words. The series is composed of seven works created on a typewriter. These unaddressed and never sent letters, but directed to specific people, have originally been composed, edited and typewritten in 2018. The current versions were edited and retyped in 2023 specifically for the exhibition at Prostor. The editing process was guided by the effort of finding the past versions of oneself - by placing the own personality in the time when the encounter happened. Typewriting as a manual process emphasizes the materiality of a letter as an object in this one-way correspondence. Waves is a site-specific installation, composed of large-format drawings on plasterboards arranged around the exhibition space. They compose a continuous seascape through images inspired from Split. The drawings are supposed to place the audience – the readers of the letters – in a specifically constructed setting that evokes a different contextual interpretation of the love letters. Drawings are based on a memory, as a landscape or a city is remembered, which makes them associative, but distinguishable from a specific place. Both letters and the drawings are evoking the sense of the work in progress, deliberately leaving the errors where they occurred. Thе performative aspect of reading and the scenography were the features that defined the exhibiting character of these letters. The aim of this kind of setup is to welcome, soften and comfort the audience, making them a part of a situated genre scene. This idea was inspired by the genre painting that most notably was developed by 17th century Dutch painters such as Vermeer. In that type of paintings, the letters and their readings were a common theme, where the motif of the sea was subtly, but intentionally put in the scene. Iconographic meaning of the sea in relation to the reading of a letter was to suggest the tone of the letter. If the sea was calm, the love was flourishing. If the sea was wild and agitated, so was the love. The audience, while stepping into the exhibition space and taking part in it, thus enters the imaginary contemporary version of a Dutch painting. Playing along with the dichotomy between masculinity and femininity is evident in the pink colours of the envelopes, moreover in the labour of typewriting, a work that was in the past most often attributed to women, as much as the mentioned colour. The translation of three letters to Croatian (as well as their first edition in Macedonian), language that is more gender-specific than English, has further allowed for the queer aspect to emerge. The ambiguity can place the reader both in the position of a receiver or a sender - writer of the letter. The notion of love as mentioned in the title is fluctuating as well. I have fallen in love with a handful of humans, five animals, a hundred or so books and artworks, one museum, and three cities, writes Paul B. Preciado (...) I have known four kinds of amorous passion in my life: the kind that a human causes, the kind that an animal provokes, the kind that is generated by a historical fabrication of the mind (book, work of art, music, or even institution), and the kind a city can trigger. The project was produced and exhibited for the first time as a site-specific installation at PrivatePrint Studio and at the XIII Biennial of Young Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, both in Skopje, North Macedonia. In its further editions, the exhibition retains the performative elements, but with different scenography and dynamics. Darko Aleksovski (1989) is a visual artist whose practice is formed on the intersection between images and writings. He holds BFA and MFA Degrees from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje and is currently based in Veles, North Macedonia. He was an artist-in-residence at bm:ukk Artist-in-Residence Program (Vienna, Austria), Deutsche Börse Residency Program at Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt, Germany), Digital Residency Program at SCS Centar-Jadro (Skopje, N. Macedonia), the CreArt Artist-in-Residence Program at Atelierhaus Salzamt (Linz, Austria), and the VOIDS 2022 Open Studio Programme (Split/Dubrovnik, Croatia). Notable group international exhibitions include You Can’t Discourse Without Disco – WHW Akademija 2022 Closing Programme, Galerija Nova (Zagreb, Croatia),Traces and Memories, Counihan Gallery in Brunswick (Melbourne, 2021), What would happen if? The choice to build an alternative future, Museo Santa Joana (Aveiro, 2020), The Tokyo Art Book Fair 2017, Warehouse TERRADA (Tokyo, 2017), Streetlight, Revisited, Roman Susan Gallery (Chicago, 2019), and 55. Oktobarski Salon – Disappearing Things, The Museum of the City of Belgrade (Belgrade, 2014). The exhibition is part of the "Spaces of Empowerment" program that the "Culture Hub Croatia" Platform is implementing in 2023 as part of the Prostor creative hub. The exhibition is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The work of the Platform "Culture Hub Croatia" is supported by the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society and the Kultura nova Foundation. The letters are translated by Jasmina Šarić and proofread by Kristina Tešija and Laura Short Curator: Jasmina Šarić / Technical setup: Marino Vukasović i Darko Aleksovski
Gerta Xhaferaj: 16'
July 1st - August 18th 2023
Being intuitively drawn to working in a documentary manner, in her work Gerta Xhaferaj deals with the topics of cultural identity, dynamics of the urban area, transformations of the city and retroactive changes of self and memory. The exhibition 16' delves into these themes by presenting them through an ambiental installation where she combines sound, video and photography with the elements of construction that can be seen on the streets of contemporary Albania. Aesthetic Abortion is a series of photographs that explores the structural character of urban peripheries in Tirana, Albania’s capital city. The series deals with the aesthetic legacy of the periphery, recording the visual identity of a zone and at the same time mourning the violence that has fundamentally transformed the character of that site. Aesthetic Abortion documents houses constructed in the Astir neighbourhood, on the western periphery of Tirana. Each photograph in the series focuses on a single structure, and the aesthetic multiplicity of these structures reflects their informal genesis. These houses represent a contemporary architectural vernacular that is common in Albania, where post-socialist hopes of economic success and stability led citizens to construct private homes in many urban peripheries, utilizing their own design, without the help of professional architects. These structures were frequently built without proper planning permission, but they were also completed in an ambiguous legal context, in which informality was the norm and the bureaucracy necessary to obtain these permits made them — practically speaking — difficult or impossible for many citizens to obtain. Subsequent efforts on the part of residents to legalize their homes have sometimes dragged on for more than a decade, leaving families in limbo. A destiny of one such home is presented in the video entitled 16’ which delves into the aesthetical and political relevance of a collapsing house and the profound philosophical significance imbued within the notion of home. It embarks on a meticulous artistic speculation, approaching the essence of what a domicile truly represents, while contemplating its profound entanglement with memory and the structures of belonging. It is a story about the house that’s being built for 30 years and demolished in 16 minutes. The placement of this house in the suburbs of Tirana, Albania, bestows upon it an additional stratum of intricacy and complexity. The informal construction that burgeoned in the aftermath of the nation's dictatorship mirrors the indomitable human urge for shelter and security amid the waves of political and societal transformation. These hastily erected structures embody both resilience and fragility, a subversive political potency but also a weak derivative of power games, serving as an apt reflection of the tumultuous history that pervades the very kernel of the nation. In "The Poetics of Space", Gaston Bachelard navigates the psychological dimensions of home and its profound impact upon human consciousness. He posits that our homes act as vessels of remembrance, shaping our identities and endowing us with a sense of rootedness. A house, with its rooms, corners, and concealed crevices, metamorphoses into a receptacle for our most intimate experiences—a repository of cherished moments that shape our perception of self. Hence, the collapse of a house signifies not solely the loss of a physical structure, but also the disentangling of an intimacy, of a block of memories, and a rupture in the very essence of belonging. It serves as a peculiar reminder of the impermanence that permeates our material existence and the fragility of the bonds we forge with the spaces we inhabit. Abundance of inconsistencies of the aesthetical features of the presented structures, the monumentality of the destruction as shown in the video, and construction elements infiltrated into the exhibition space with the echoing sound of the collapse are aimed to evoke the sensations of a feist. To intensify this ambient, during the opening the artist offers an analogy between eating the cake in the shape of one of the houses presented in the photographs and destroying a house. If a house can be destroyed in 16 minutes, how much does it take for a cake to be eaten? Gerta Xhaferaj (b. 1993, Fier, Albania) is a visual artist who lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. She studied architecture in Tirana, where she received her MSc. degree in 2017. She is currently pursuing an MA program in Fine Arts at the FHNW University of Art and Design in Basel. Gerta’s work has been exhibited in: Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje (2023); Manifesta Biennial 14, Prishtina (2022); Zeta Contemporary Art Center Tirana (2022); Boulevard Art & Media Institute; Tirana (2022); Vogue Photo Festival; Milan; (2021); Ecumene Project, Bologna (2021); Bazament Art Space, Tirana (2020 - 2021); Galeria e Bregdetit, Vlora (2019); COD - Center for Openness and Dialogue, Tirana (2019) amongst others and she is a finalist at "Ardhje Award 2022" at ZETA Contemporary Art Center in Tirana. She is a 2022 winner of the VID Grant Financial Prize by the VID Foundation for Photography, Amsterdam. The exhibition is part of the "Spaces of Empowerment" program that the "Culture Hub Croatia" Platform is implementing in 2023 as part of the Prostor creative hub. The exhibition is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The work of the Platform "Culture Hub Croatia" is supported by the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society and the Kultura nova Foundation. Curator: Jasmina Šarić / Technical setup: Marino Vukasović / Assistant: Lotta Erkkilä
Spaces of Tolerance: illustrations
August 7th - 18th 2023
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As part of the "Spaces of Tolerance" (SPOT) project, through an open call for illustrators, we collected numerous visual proposals that depict the society in which we live or in which we would like to live. We would like to thank everyone who sent their illustrations and shared their honest stories with us. The three awarded illustrations are: Ivana Castellano, "Let me blossom" Nastja Kljajić, "Love House" Filip Vrcić, "Tolerate THIS" The exhibition of 20 illustrations that received the most points from the project partners (CHC, Queeranarchive & Jutro) was on view in Prostor, every working day from 10 am to 7 pm, until August 18. With this exhibition, we wanted to raise awareness of the importance of understanding "others", accepting diversity and creating a positive and inclusive society for future generations. The SPOT project is supported by the Minority Rights Group Europe and PILnet, within the MARIO project funded by the European Union: Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Program (2021-2027).
Pavle Mijuca: Endless Becomings
August 25th - September 20th 2023
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The rapid development of the coast under the influence of (massive) tourism, apartment building and concretization, as well as the consequences of corruption, gentrification and illegal construction, are key phenomena for the artistic practice of Pavle Mijuca, who bases his work on research and then transfers it into visuals, that is, which summarize the results which occur, but also encourage reflection on the trivialities of reality and possible consequences for the future. In the series that includes the works called Betoniziraj!, A Catwalk on Riva and Pukni puško, rodilo se muško, the artist explores the phenomenology of urbanism under the influence of tourism in Split, and the starting point and recurring motif is Duje, a macho investor who embodies the problems of urban planning such as corruption, gentrification , illegal construction and unregulated planning. For the mentioned series, called Full of new beginnings, Mijuca won the BA Grant Award at the University of Zurich. The name itself comes from the official campaign of the Croatian Tourist Board (HTZ) for the 2021 tourist season. Work Betoniziraj! in an unconventional way, the artist depicts apartmentization and concretization, processes that have been penetrating the Dalmatian coast for decades. The starting point is GUP and the effort to make it interactive, like a video game, a medium used by Mijuca even in his first works of art. This is how he arranges the dystopia of an apartment-built beach in an isometric perspective, which is ruled by Split investor Duje, a fictitious character who builds skyscrapers and apartment houses on every free plot of beach. Therefore, the work can be seen as a dystopian GUP, a kind of anti-GUP, and the map can be zoomed to the smallest detail. The work Pukni puško, rodilo se muško was inspired by the phenomenon of the constant upgrading of floors, which is present throughout the Balkans. The moment the roof is left out, when the load-bearing columns stick out impatiently waiting for the new floor to be erected, symbolizes the anticipation of the birth of the next son. This absurd act of raising floors indefinitely was seen as a direct product of the still-present patriarchy in our climate. In the work A Catwalk on Riva, the scarf is a seasonal status symbol of the Jagoda doll. The scarf functions as a statement, i.e. as a tourist souvenir that symbolizes the ubiquity of tourism and its hegemony in the Dalmatian coast. In the same form of a scarf, he presents a similar issue of spatial planning, this time exploring the phenomenology of the city of Zagreb, through the work The City is My Lunapark!, developed as part of Vizkultura's research and education program How to think about urbanism and public space?. The most recent of the works, which he developed as part of his studies at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, investigates and analyzes the phenomenon of coastal development on the examples of Scheveningen Bad in the Netherlands and Žnjan in Croatia, contrasting the history of both maritime assets, but also trying to reveal their similarities and specificities. Referring to the latest proposal of the Law on Maritime Property and Sea Ports, Mijuca speculates on the possible future of the Croatian Adriatic coast. The research results in a publication and a model packaged in the form of a toy, which, along with other objects, intentionally clashes the aesthetics of the gallery space and that of the souvenir shop. List of works: Endless Becoming of Seaside Resorts: Scheveningen Bad and Žnjan, 2023 Custom made toy boxes, research paper, 3D printed models, inkjet print on paper, dimensions variable The City is My Lunapark!, 2022 Custom made printed silk scarf, 100 × 100 cm Betoniziraj! (Betonize!), 2021 Digital illustration, dimensions variable Print on mesh banner, 330 × 200 cm A Catwalk on Riva, 2020 Mannequin installation Custom made printed silk scarf, 90 × 90 cm Pukni puško, rodilo se muško (Fire a rifle, a male was born), 2020 Digital print on cotton, dimensions variable Pavle Mijuca (HR/RS, *1999) is an artist and a spatial researcher. In his practice, he grapples with the phenomenologies of cities and spatial planning. He researches urban planning-related issues such as gentrification, illegal construction, and unregulated planning. The result of his research is often a satirical visual language translated into the medium of digital illustration. The illustrations are printed on various textile materials and presented as physical objects. He holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and is currently enrolled in the Studio for Immediate Spaces at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam. For his BA graduation project "Full of new beginnings" he received the Bachelor Grant Award. He lives and works in Amsterdam. Instagram: pavle.mijuca The exhibition is part of the "Spaces of Play" program that the "Culture Hub Croatia" Platform is implementing in 2023 as part of the Prostor creative hub. The exhibition is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The work of the Platform "Culture Hub Croatia" is supported by the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society and the Kultura nova Foundation. Curator: Jasmina Šarić / Technical setup: Marino Vukasović / Assistant: Lotta Erkkilä Photos: Lotta Erkkilä / Glorija Lizde
Crystal Clean: Signs of Change
October 18th - November 6th 2023
Crystal Clean is a multidisciplinary art project launched in 2019 by graphic designer Dora Bilandžić and cultural manager Andrea Šarić, engaged around the topic of new relationships with nature in society. The project is motivated by response to the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity and other consequences of the modern consumer society. The main purpose of the project is to empower individuals to take individual action, advocate a stronger connection with nature and community building. The exhibition in Prostor is the result of a residency visit and several months of research in Split and Dalmatia, in the framework of the project “New Eco Realities: Crystal Clean”. The authors of the project have talked to the people from the local community, food growers, and individuals who embrace alternative lifestyles. They have distilled their impressions and thoughts into a series of new experimental media works that address the problems they encountered, possible directions, and solutions. Given that for the purposes of this exhibition you have been dealing with issues of consumerism, climate crisis, environmental pollution in the area of Split and Dalmatia for several months, what kind of reactions and answers did you encounter? We are grateful for the opportunity to explore the topics we deal with in Dalmatia. It is a place that is very close to us, that we love very much and that is abundant in natural beauty. However, the process of artistic research gave us insight into some difficult and disappointing realities. We all know about the possible problems created by mass apartment building, overfishing, pollution of the sea with waste water and plastic, etc. But staying in Split outside the summer season and talking to the local community, growers and people who live an alternative lifestyle helped us to better understand the extent of the problem, and the fact that as individuals we are often unable to react to the ecological challenges that are in front of us. Crystal Clean deals, among other things, with the collective attitude towards the environment and living beings in it, and now that focus has been directed to Dalmatia and the Adriatic Sea. Do you notice any prominent determinants, phenomena in society's relationship to the sea? We were forced to face forms of carelessness about the sea that we knew about, but also those that we didn't, such as the problem of disposal of wastewater and sewage, which most often ends up in the sea. If it was only about the local population, this would not necessarily create a worrying problem, but this summer Croatia was visited by over 6 million tourists, which greatly burdens the existing systems and significantly affects the environment. Also, overfishing has terribly devastated the living world of the Adriatic Sea. How demanding was it to find individuals who advocate an alternative lifestyle in these areas? In your opinion, is this a reflection of the general state of awareness of Dalmatians? Due to Dora's networking with permaculturists, it was not difficult to find individuals who advocate an alternative lifestyle in Split, however, these individuals are very few. During regular visits to the market and conversations with older farmers, we learned that the lifestyle close to nature and home-grown food is quickly being lost, and many older people note that their children and grandchildren are showing less and less interest in their fields or gardens, and that on most of the arable land, olive monoculture and conventional agriculture are still promoted. This is certainly a reflection of the general state of the consumerist society, including Split and Dalmatia. In general, both in the north and in the south of Croatia, people who live outside the cities have a much stronger and closer relationship with nature and more often grow their own food. What does your creative process look like, from the research process to translating the results into visuals? During this months-long research and communication with people from the local community, did you come across any surprises, any unexpected results? It is fun and intuitive. We are guided by things that make us happy, we look at problems that are collectively avoided by society and we search for simple and powerful ways to convey the messages that we consider important. The result that we really did not expect are the signs that we present at the exhibition. Retrospectively, we recognize the pattern in a series of photos we took during our stay in Split, but we really didn't expect to get involved in making real "traffic" signs. Also, in the process of research, we discovered a real self-sustaining property in Solin, managed by Ivan, who generously shared his knowledge and perspective with us. Already during our first visit to Split and residential stay in January 2023, we felt the beginning of a dialogue regarding the topics we are dealing with, and we hope to show the exhibition in other cities in Croatia as well. (in conversation with Željka Vuko) The exhibition is part of the "Spaces of Sustainability" program that Platform "Culture Hub Croatia" is implementing in 2023 as part of the creative hub Prostor. The program "New Eco Realities: Crystal Clean" is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The work of the Platform "Culture Hub Croatia" is supported by the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society and the Kultura nova Foundation. Curator: Jasmina Šarić / Technical setup: Marino Vukasović / Assistant: Željka Vuko Photos: Karla Polić (Kartolina) / Glorija Lizde
Filip Vlahov: Dokazi (Evidence)
November 9th - 24th 2023
The first solo exhibition of an artist and design student Filip Vlahov from Split, "Evidence", introduces us to the meticulously interpreted world of linear shaping of human and animal anatomy that steps out of the frame of reality. The author's long drawing and directing of densely spaced lines creates a surreal dynamic of volume that highlights the vibrancy of depictions, including those of pure skeleton. Such a detailed linear description, which makes the observer imagine a movement of the motif in a metaphysical sense, is perfected by the author in his previously made etchings, which, in addition to the cycle of anatomical drawings made in the rapidograph technique and ink on paper, are also visible as part of the "Evidence" exhibition. In addition to the graphic technique of etching, the author was significantly inspired by historical medical and anatomical illustrations, along with Polish posters related to the representation of the human body. - Flora Novak The exhibition is part of the Design Month implemented in the framework of the program "Spaces of Empowerment-Play-Sustainability" that Platform "Culture Hub Croatia" is implementing in 2023 as part of the creative hub Prostor. The program is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The work of the Platform "Culture Hub Croatia" is supported by the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society and the Kultura nova Foundation. Technical setup: Alen Marić, Marino Vukasović
