Past Residents
Past Resident2010: Foundation for a Civil Society
Dušica Dražić
Dušica Dražić works with installation, performance and photography and carries a special interest in art in public space. Focusing on the search for abandoned, forgotten spaces in the urban structure of modern cities and exploring the transformation of these spaces, she rethinks them in terms of cultural continuity, symbolic irregularities and individual actions. In Dražić’s production, concept and form are of equal importance in opening the work to multi-layered interpretations, that is, for developing new ways of seeing. Dušica Dražić explores the ambivalent interrelationship between a citizen and a city, their mutual support and protectiveness and at the same time isolation and destruction. Dražić searches for spaces without order, spaces of irregularity, difference, flexibility and intuition. Dušica’s works deal with micro-histories of a locus and are also an act of narration.
Dušica Dražić was born in 1979 in Belgrade, Serbia, where she currently lives and works. She graduated from the faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 2004, and finished an MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University Weimar in 2006. Since 2006 Dušica Dražić is also a part of the collective “usually4” with K. Freino (PL), S. Hopkins (UK/KEN) and Teresa Luzio (P). In 2010 Dražić received the Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos Award (Serbia) and the Young European Artist Trieste Contemporanea Award (Italy) and was granted a DAAD scholarship in 2005/2006.
Events & Exhibitions
The Power to Host
June 15–July 29, 2011
Dušica Dražić, Dead-End Street, 2009, Installation, Dimension variable. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by K. Freino.
Dušica Dražić, The Winter Garden, 2010, Installation. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by D. Dražic.
Dušica Dražić, Prelom - Breach, Break, Breakage, Failure, Fraction, Infraction, Rupture, Split, Layout, 2008, Installation, Dimension variable. Courtesy of the artist. photo by G. Micevski.
Dušica Dražić, One Home In Rydygiera 45a, 2006, Installation, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by D. Dražic.
Dušica Dražić, Young Serbians, 2006, Video performance. Courtesy of the artist.
Past Resident2010: Foundation for a Civil Society
Jiri Skala
Jiří Skála is known for his playful and witty conceptualist approach to various social contexts and situations. He often employs participants in gamelike interactions in his work, or institutes subtle interventions creating objects that have only been minimally altered but which are no less effective in altering our own perspectives of the given situation. His recent work has focussed on the written word and inter-personal communication, for example, in his ongoing project Handwriting Exchange Skala, and someone chosen from a completely different social and cultural background, become acquainted through a daily process of learning how to copy each other’s handwriting.
Jiří Skála, born 1976, lives and works in Prague, Czech Republic. He studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, and at the post-graduate program at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. His work has been exhibited widely including the following: Tirana Biennale I, Albania; Palais de Tokyo, France; Prague Biennale, Czech Republic; and the UBS Gallery in New York. He is a co-founder of the Etc. Gallery in Prague, established in 2004, and a member of the PAS group, together with the artist Tomáš Vaněk and curator Vít Havranek. He is listed in the Younger than Jesus Artist Directory compiled by the New Museum in New York, and in November of 2009 was awarded the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for young artists in the Czech Republic by Vaclav Havel.
in collaboration with Zbyněk Baladrán, It Always Makes Her Sick When She Thinks Of The Infinite, 2008, Reading machine performing severals sort stories, 68 diapositive slides,construction, 8 slide projectors, wood, and metal. Courtesy of the artist.
Jiri Skala, Exchange of Handwriting, 2006, A play for 2 actors, 2 school chairs, 4 notebooks, and 2 pens. Courtesy of the artist.
in collaboration with Zbyněk Baladrán, The Involuntary Archivist, 2009, Watching machine performing a sort story, digital video, construction, hard disk driver, speakers, HD media player, projector, wood, and metal. Courtesy of the artist.
Jiri Skala, One Family of Objects, 2009, Book, A5 format. Courtesy of the artist and JPR Ringier and tranzit.org.
Jiri Skala, To Be Titled, first and second version, 2006 - 2008, Audio installation, 2 CD player, 2 hi-fi receiver, iron construction. Courtesy of the artist.
Residents from Czech Republic
Past Resident2010: KUD Mreza Association for Arts and Culture, Alkatraz Gallery
Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak
‘The work of Nika Oblak and Primož Novak draws parallels between a society driven by personal needs and capital and their own role as artists in the contemporary art market. Infused with humor, their work adopts the visual tactics and seductive constructions commonly employed in the mass media to lure the consumer.’ (Yasmeen Baig-Clifford, Move – new European media art, 2009) Oblak & Novak have exhibited in the Sharjah Biennial 9, UAE; Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Japan Media Arts Festival; Transmediale Berlin, Germany; and most recently in Biennale Cuvee, Linz, Austria.
Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak. Courtesy of the artist.
