Melancholy, proposal for a monument

2018
Exhibition Ruins of Future Utopia, Eugster || Belgrade, Serbia
Plaster, neon, steel frame, 260 x 500 x 30 cm

Melancholy, Proposal for a Monument is a 1:1 reconstruction of a segment of the front entrance to the Serbian pavilion in Venice, transposed to the gallery space. The proposal has been made in realistic dimensions inside the gallery as a response to the impossibility of installing the work on the original façade in the Giardini. The inscription Yugoslavia, the name of a country that has not existed since 1991 above the front entrance was used as a basis for a textual intervention, initiated by a walk through the Giardini during the winter, while it was empty. Quite spontaneously, while standing in front of what was then the “abandoned” Serbian pavilion, looking at the name of the former state in which I have lived for more than a decade, I came up with an idea to intervene on the concrete emblem of JUGOSLAVIA by installing neon tubes that would form the word MELANCHOLY. The identical number of letters in these two words precisely defines the feeling that emerges when remembering Yugoslavia, the idea of communion and the ideal of freedom that this country inherited. It emerged as a memorial of a personal relationship with the memory of a country that no longer exists.  Melancholy, Proposal for a Monument  is, at the same time, an homage to the imaginary spaces that are stored in our memories and whose images are destined to fade, despite our best efforts to preserve them.

Photo: © Ivan Zupanc