Solace of Memory in Photographic Museum Maribor

The exhibition opening will be on Friday, 14 October at 6 pm at the Photographic Museum in Maribor.

14. 10. – 3. 12. 2022

From Friday, 14 October, the Photographic Museum in Maribor will host the exhibition Solace of Memory, which premiered at the Photon Gallery last autumn, and was then presented in Vienna as part of the Rotlicht Festival.

Participating photographers: Andrzej Baturo (PL), Vladimir Birgus (CZ), Janez Korošin (SI), Branko Lenart (AT), Zora Plešnar (SI), Anton Podstraský (SK), János Szász (HU), Lenke Szilágyi (HU).

Around thirty years ago, major social changes took place in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). During that time, some countries of the former socialist bloc also declared their independence. Slovenia was among them. On the occasion of celebrating thirty years of independence, we in Photon asked ourselves how photography recorded the time before these turning points – in the lives of ordinary people. With this exhibition project, we are not interested in fateful historical events and great personalities, but we want to offer an insight into everyday life and present some contradictions of the social system that built on a utopian vision of the future. To revisit the “family albums” of the former socialist countries, we are presenting some important photographers from the CEE region, who documented life in Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. All of them, even with different formal and aesthetic starting points, share a subjective and often humorous view of banal and absurd everyday life.

You can learn more about the exhibition here.

Curated by Dejan Sluga

The project was inspired by the book “How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed” by Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić, from whom we also borrowed the subtitle of the project.

 Photos from the opening
 Exhibition Solace of Memory on RTV SLO (Slovene)
 Exhibition catalog