Life is an autonomous, personal, own journey through space-time. Since we are not alone, we share it with others. We are all basically migrants, travelling underneath the same big sky.
The international exhibition MIG 21 – Migratory Interdisciplinary Grid is an artistic showcase of movement, covering the most integral palette of possible starting points, composed of series of intimate experiences, which contain countless meanings, as well as original, personal, and artistic layers, as suggested by the collected works. The mobility of artists and art was related to the current moment – though it never was, and never will be otherwise, in the sense of movement stopping – and captured in an autonomous fusion, which connected various artistic, historical and contemporary artistic symbols.
The goal was not to organise a reportage-style exhibition, although such a principle would have been much simpler. Rather than that, the idea was to comprise art in all the scope and profoundness of the poetics and various media it includes. Hence, the temporal scope was limited to 45 years, with the oldest work dating back to the year 1971, and the youngest belonging to the most recent productions of 2016. Through such a temporal dimension, the younger generation too was defined, which is understood in this context as a contemporary phenomenon. It wasn’t intentional for the selection that most of the artists in the exhibition have represented their countries in the Venice biennials, the Documenta in Kassel, and numerous other museums and galleries around the world.
The theme of migrations, of movement, of motion, was associated with personal poetics, distinctive creative approaches, various media, spatial settings, interpersonal relationships, original cultures, and own interventions. The multi-layered nature of the works was combined into an elemental humanistic message and although there are references to the avantgarde, but rather than the historical, we prefer a contemporary approach. Political ideologies could be found and interconnected in statements about wars and everything related to wars being primarily an economic category, but the MIG 21 exhibition was opted for life: migrations are a reflection of life, a celebration of life, they are life itself.
Peter Tomaž Dobrila
Participating artists: AES+F, Žarko Bašeski, Marko Brecelj, Bureau d’Etudes, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Adam Donovan, Metod Frlic, Jusuf Hadžifejzović, Marko Jakše, Jovan Joca Jovanović, Herlinde Koelbl, Aleksandra Kostič, Oleg Kulik, Zbigniew Libera, Ján Macko, Jože Slaček, Mladen Stilinović, Raša Todosijević, Ulrich Wüst, Srdjan Živulović