WUNDERKAMMER
Video installation, 2019
The video installation Wunderkammer questions the possibility of understanding the past, even a very recent one, one we may vaguely remember, thus addressing the issue of its accessibility and transparency. By creating a complex visual narrative presented in the form of a two-channel video installation, the work seeks to pose the question: How do we comprehend the past when it is not contextualized in any specific way, but rather when any form of contextualization is left to the discretion of the isolated individual? In a contemporary moment obsessed with the past, with both near and distant historical narratives that shape identities, alliances, and conflicts, the work challenges the very idea of history’s transparency and comprehensibility. It raises the question of what the past communicates to us when it is reduced to a series of visually attractive or static images, accompanied by mechanical or poorly understood sounds, without a clear narrative or commentary that is always written in the present.
The project was realized in collaboration with the Museum of Yugoslavia and supported by the Film Center of Serbia.
46 POTTED PLANTS
Installation, 2014-2015
Socialist Yugoslavia existed for 46 years, from 1945 to 1991. In official rhetoric, the state was often compared to a blooming garden, and plants were an integral part of every official institution’s interior. Nearly three decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, one of the few images that has remained unchanged in this region is precisely that of numerous potted plants adorning the hallways of official institutions across the former state—plants that, as silent witnesses, remain unchanged and untouched by the history of this region over the past few decades.
Ana Adamović – Biography
Ana Adamović primarily focuses on themes of identity and memory, exploring these phenomena through photographic and video works. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Serbia and internationally, including at the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, the Museum of Photography in Thessaloniki, the Museum of Photography in Braunschweig, and many others. She graduated in Comparative Literature from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade and studied photography at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 2019, she earned a PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Adamović is the founder of Kiosk – Platform for Contemporary Art, based in Belgrade, where she lives and works.