Artist
Pavo Marinović
Pavo Marinović (b. 1995) is a photographer and visual artist who lives and works between France, Switzerland and the Balkans. In 2020, he graduated with a BA in Photography from Lausanne’s ECAL. His work has since been shown at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and Paris Photo, amongst others. Traversing fields of identity, conflict, and collective memory through photography, video and installation, Marinović’s practice explores the state of a territory in transit, as well as its social effects.
Marble Ass
Marble Ass contributes to photographic research on how masculinities are constructed in post-conflict societies. Taking shape in an installation, the project questions the existing archetypes in the former Yugoslavia, as well as revealing the role of territory in political transition and its effects on gender and identity construction. The fragmentation of the images allows forms to be remodelled, exposing how humans are shaped by their cultural environment, history, heritage, and intergenerational transmission; the collages simultaneously create a space of redefined narratives. The installation consists of four different typologies of images; a series of self-portraits, family archives, screen stills of popular media imagery, and collages of architecture. In their presentation, the components enter into dialogue with one another. Deconstructed frames that overlay images confront different ideas on masculinities, sexuality, and their construction in political transition. The project’s title refers to the very first ex-Yugoslavian movie casting queer roles and queer actors by the filmmaker Želimir Žilnik. The film offers insight into the life of sex workers in Belgrade that attempt to calm young men returning from the trauma of war. Just as the movie pays homage to queer characters, Marble Ass aims to open up a conversation on gender and sexuality, provoking a more liberal construct of self-expression.
This year, we selected a group of artists working in the broader regional context whose artistic practices cover a variety of visual approaches we’d like to support through Organ Vida programs. Sanja Bistričić Srića experiments with different techniques of deconstruction and decontextualisation of archived images. The work of Filip Bojović and Pavo Marinović reflects on the visual language and heritage found in the context of the Balkans. Dea Botica revisits family maritime tradition through a speculative documentary depiction of everyday life on a cargo ship. And Fred Mungo captures the mundane experience of serving and eating food as means of understanding social, economical and cultural implications of food consumption.