Nonument Group: Movements and torrents – where the rivers Dnipro and Elbe meet
9.10.2024 – 18.1.2025
Organiser Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris
Nonument Group Miloš Kosec, Nika Grabar, Martin Bricelj Baraga, Neja Tomšič
The exhibition “Movements and torrents – where the rivers Dnipro and Elbe meet” at the Cité Internationale des Arts gallery in Paris is curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Sasha Baydal. The Cité Internationale des Arts is a cultural and residential centre in the heart of Paris that has hosted artists from all over the world since 1965. Since 2020, it has also been home to a gallery space, which hosts thematic and curated exhibitions, often drawn from the Cité’s cultural legacy and partner collections, as well as from the ongoing production taking place at the residency centre. The exhibitions are well-received and very well attended.
The exhibition Movements and Torrents – Where the Dnipro and Elbe Rivers Meet examines the place occupied in the French cultural landscape by artists from the so-called “post-socialist” countries of Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, in the light of the terrible past and present wars that have involved the forced displacement of human and non-human beings, cultural practices, objects and techniques. The exhibition highlights the constant flow of communities and artists since the 1970s between these regions and France, and examines their specific trajectories, practices and histories. It combines the Cold War period, when the opposition between two ideological blocs seemed to dictate a rigid geopolitical structure, with the present, in which unresolved issues and conflicts from the past are resurfacing. To this end, the exhibition will be based on an intergenerational perspective and will also include artworks from the collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), many of which were created by former and current residents of the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.
With this exhibition, the curators invite visitors to imagine a place where the Dnipro and Elbe rivers – which flow through the cities of Dnipro in Ukraine and Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic – merge into a turbulent flow.
In the same imaginative way that the rivers meet, the exhibition interweaves a number of narrative threads: from the conditions of exile to the mobility and infrastructure of work and tourism in socialism to the present day; from the loss of home to the hope of finding a new life elsewhere; from forgetting to remembering through practices that reactivate memories, gestures and artistic techniques.This geographical speculation corresponds to the reality of the family journey of one of the two co-curators, Sasha Baydal, and serves as a metaphor for the movements of people that challenge predefined geographical and historical frames.
In the multi-year research and art project From Nowhere to Nowhere, Pioneer Route, the Nonument Group deals with the now almost forgotten pioneer route in Ljubljana. The line was a narrow-gauge railway that ran between Vičič and Podutiko between 1948 and 1954 and was operated by children, pioneer railwaymen. After its closure, its remains were dismantled and relocated, and the route was forgotten. In 2019, the Nonument Group paid tribute to the former line with a performative sound walk on the former route of the line. The intervention resulted in a video essay, an archive-in-the-making, and a spatial installation that continues in the Archive of the Future in progress. The ability to perceive and comprehend nonuments expresses not only a longing for lost space-time, but also and above all the hope revealed by the potential of free thought.
NONUMENT GROUP is a research and art collective that deals with the processes of remembering and forgetting in space. Their activities concern the research of nonuments – architecture, monuments, public spaces, infrastructure – whose meaning has been transformed by social or political change. In doing so, they create archives, organise field events and explore diverse strategies for creating artistic interventions that interrogate the meaning of heritage in space through the experience of the present. Nonument Group consists of Neja Tomšič, Martin Bricelj Baraga, Nika Grabar and Miloš Kosec. Their projects involve collaboration with a wide range of co-creators, researchers and artists internationally. For their contribution to the enrichment of architectural culture, in 2021 they were awarded the Plečnik Medal, the highest national prize in the field of architecture, with the justification: ‘Like Nonument itself, the work of the group does not function as a definitive action, but as a space for reflection. Nonument addresses the current and alarming state of the space that surrounds us, including its symbolic meanings.” (- from the prize’s justification: http://www.drustvo-dal.si/pdf/Ple.knjizica.21PRESS.pdf)
Nonument Group’s works have been exhibited at U3 – Triennial of Slovenian Literary Art: Against the Flow of Time, the 35th Ljubljana International Graphic Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana, Cukrarna, MAO – Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, the Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts, Creative Time Summit in New York, ISEA in Durban, Construction in Dnipro, Ukraine, Svetlobna gverila in Ljubljana and Speculum Artium in Trbovlje.
The hosting is supported by Municipality of Ljubljana, Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia Paris, Cite des Arts Paris.
