8 – 30 June 2016
Home of culture, Kamnik
In a project titled Relay of youth is a photographer Olja Triaška Stefanović focuses on the route of the relay, a former celebration of youth and coexistence between the different nations of Yugoslavia. This is a story about a country and its end.
Photographer Olja Triaška Stefanović currently lives in Slovakia. She was born in Yugoslavia and became a citizen of Serbia after its breakup. Especially the 20th century was special in that, without crossing the threshold of their home, people could experience several different state arrangements or political systems during their lifetime, as Slovak historian Ľubomír Lipták writes in his works. Perhaps that is why people became braver during this time, because they did not resist the nomadic way of life.
One of the central themes of modern photography is looking back into history. Although not exclusively, this applies to authors who have encountered different cultures, mentalities and religions in their lives. It is these authors who are more sensitive to historical moments that also influenced their lives. Olja Triaška Stefanović is no exception to this. In the project Youth Relay, the story of some great country and its end (2014), he deals with the annual Youth Relay, which Yugoslavia introduced in 1945 in honor of the Prime Minister and later President of the Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980). At that time, the relay of youth was supposed to illustrate the style of all the nations that coexisted in the country, and at the same time, it greatly contributed to the construction of the personality cult of Tito himself. Although similar running events were also known in other socialist countries (run for peace, run of friendship, relay of friendship, etc.), the Yugoslav youth relay may have lasted the longest: until 1988.
The focus of the author's attention is on the mapping of sculptural and architectural monuments linked to this historical context, while at the same time she expands the installation with original artefacts (appendices, maps, publications). On the other hand, the museum aspect of the exhibition is balanced by a photographic installation, which shows the characteristics of current techniques of recording the life and institutions of the time. In recent years, the countries of the Eastern Bloc have been gripped by nostalgia for the socialist era, which is the result of extreme instability today, when societies are unable to adequately respond to many global challenges, such as the economic dictates of multinationals, climate change, rapid population growth, an aging Western civilization and growing poverty.
Bohunka Koklesová
PHOTOS OF THE OPENING
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1030996596954170.1073741900.224568250930346&type=3
(photo: Lana Bregar)
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