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Photography of the information board of the women’s political camp in the Ethnographic Museum
After the guerrilla action of installing an information board on Goli otok, the artist exhibits photography with the aim of introducing the marginalized topic of women’s historical suffering into institutions
Art Pavilion in the Ethnographic Museum, Zagreb
26.10.2023. – 26.11.2023.
“The Lighted Room — Conflict” in the Ethnographic Museum authored by Ph.D. Sandra Križić Roban (Institute for the History of Art), curator Irena Bekić (Art Pavilion) is a special segment of the exhibition “The Lighted Room — Women’s Photographic Practice in Croatia”.
2020 – 2021, digital photograph, 100 x 140 cm, private property
This project investigates the history of a little-known women’s political camp on the islands of Sveti Grgur and Goli otok (Radislište V), where around 850 women were imprisoned in the period from 1950 to 1956, convicted of betraying the country, the party, the people and Tito. The focus of the work is the deep trauma and long-term silence resulting from the camp regime and the treatment of female detainees. In addition to humiliation and cruel punishments, the inmates themselves were forced to punish each other, which was considered re-education along with socially useful work, as stated in Renata Jambrešić Kirin’s text published in the publication of the same name. As a result of a three-year research, in addition to publications and exhibitions, a website was published with testimonies, interviews, written memories and a list of female prisoners, as well as drawings and objects by the artist, as well as documentation on the spatial interventions carried out on the site and the discursive program conducted.
Part of the artistic strategy also referred to the fact that the artist herself took photos of the information board on Goli otok one year after she placed it there on one of the outer walls of the building that belonged to the women’s camp, with the aim of introducing this theme into institutions through photography. By exhibiting this work, the role of photography itself is questioned, whereby it does not function as a picture, but encourages the opening of a field for problematizing the relationship to women and their place in society and history with the aim of dissolving narratives that remained on the margins of the main historical lines.
Board installation concept: Andreja Kulunčić / technical execution of the board installation: Darko Bavoljak, Andreja Kulunčić, Ivo Martinović, Silvester Ninić / graphic design of the board: Igor Kuduz. The work is part of the wider project “You betrayed the Party when you should have helped it” created in collaboration with anthropologist Renata Jambrešić Kirin and psychotherapist Dubravka Stijačić, organized by the association Goli otok “Ante Zemljar”/Darko Bavoljak and the association MAPA.