DIFFERENT WORLDS
Young Contemporary Photography from Western Balkans
Maša Bajc • Ivan Dorotić • Iztok Klančar • Petra Mrša • Marina Paulenka • Driton Selmani • Mitar Simikić • Marko Stojanović • Lana Stojićević • Eva Šuštar • Mihailo Vasiljević
30 Nov. – 11 Dec. 2015
Kino Šiška & Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography
The group exhibition Different Worlds showcases works of eleven young and emerging photographers from the Western Balkans region of Europe who have been selected through an open call organised by Photon. The show displays recent works and thus provides an insight into the latest tendencies of contemporary photography in the region.
The exhibition is part of the Young Contemporary Photography initiative that encourages, evaluates and promotes the developments of young, non-yet-established, and emerging generations of artists and photographers, up to 35 years of age. In its third edition the contest, entitled Different Worlds, explores themes of diversity, responsiveness and critical thought.
The exhibition is divided between two adjacent venues: Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography and Kino Šiška. The participating artists have been selected by international jury: Miha Colner (curator at Photon, Ljubljana), Susanne Gamauf (director of Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna) and Gabriella Uhl (independent curator and lecturer, Budapest).
The third edition of the contest did not have a set theme. Over one hundred artists applied to the open call with highly diverse works, revealing a variety of conceptual approaches as well as wide range of genres, aesthetic sensibilities, and techniques used. Contemporary photography is a distinctly eclectic field of expression, which allows endless creative possibilities. In 2015, the contest extended its reach to include applications from the broader region of Western Balkans. The decision resulted in stronger competition and an increase in the quality of works submitted. The jury was faced with very challenging task when it had to select ten among one hundred applicants. In the end, the jury chose eleven participants, which includes works by young and emerging artists from the states of the former Yugoslavia. Even though it is difficult to find a common thread among works of such diversity, certain practices seem to be fairly symptomatic. These works are either characterised by intimate subjects showing universality and particularity of contents, fictitious constructions of reality, conceptual and formal experiments with the medium, or documentary based works that show the unembellished reality of everyday life, here and now. (Miha Colner)
