YUGOSTALGIA
exhibition Walter Steinacher
SLIDE_show by Elena Fajt
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave
New York City
A short introduction by Mitja Velikonja, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
If not me, who am I? The question is posed when historical personalities of the 'age of extremes' (Eric Hobsbawm) are considered. Their inevitable fate is that all of them and always are depicted as someone else than they were previously known to be. Undisputable leader of SocialistYugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito (1892- 1980), is no exception in that. After being venerated and glorified by most Yugoslavs, and respected by the international community during his life, his image began to shade and compromise after his death and even more after the bloody collapse of his Yugoslavia in the early 90. Now, precisely just before the 30th anniversary of his death on May 4, 1980, it seems to be a good opportunity to reconsider his historic role, his achievements and failures, the ambitions and delusions of his reign, and of himself as well.
However, I understand Walter Steinacher’s works from a completely different angle. First, he does not pretend to have any special knowledge, any new, unveiled truth about Tito. Secondly, as a young Austrian artist, he is not intrinsically affected with past Yugoslav decades, that would influence his creativity. His pieces can not be easily dismissed as simply nostalgic or just another in wide spectrum of ironizations of celebrities of recent history, "past times were tough, so joke about them!" But jokes are too serious thing to be left only to entertainers and buffoons – which is why Steinacher’s paintings leave such simplistic and superficial explanations far behind. His works are funny precisely because they are so serious. For him, humor is not just a parodic surplus, a witty reinterpretation of a historical personality that is otherwise taken seriously by that person's advocates or adversaries - contrary to communication modes that dominate in our civilization that prefers serious interactions and creativity over the funny ones - his irony is the central point of demasking history and the historical personality itself. This new paradigm is one that challenges the prevailing common sense and balance of power with irony and fun. That’s precisely what enables him to demystify Tito not in points where he is usually demystified (when his image and political role is confronted with historical facts) - but on his most personal, in fact, physical, even sexual level. He not only humanizes one of the world’s leaders, he feminizes him. He leaves the usual dilemmas - whether Tito was a hero or a criminal - behind when he depicts an important historical man as a pregnant woman, the Father of the nation as its mother. Steinacher successfully subverts the annoying cliché, that behind every successful man there’s a good woman – he tells us that the woman behind is, in fact, the successful man himself. To tell it in other words: that Ken is not the opposite of Barbie doll, but - with all of his new clothes, perfect shape, peculiar hobbies, in short, with his obsession with himself - he is Barbie doll himself, the Barbiest doll of all Barbies.
ELENA FAJT
'Tito – Josip Broz Superstar'
Elena Fajt, visual artist from Slovenia, has been photographing and taping manifestations of nostalgia for Socialism in Eastern Europe for the last 10 years, from Russia and Poland to the ex Yugoslavia. In the last few years, she has particularly focused on nostalgia for the late Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito. For the video presentation in YUGOSTALGIA exhibition, ELENA FAJT selected photos taken in all seven post Yugoslav states, in different environments (culture, homes, advertising, flea markets, bars and restaurants, shops and museums), of different generations and different purposes of nostalgia (sentimental, commercial and emancipative). Her shots show how nostalgia for Tito (Titostalgia) is widespread and persistent even today, in completely new circumstances, and exactly 30 years after he died and 19 years after 'his' Yugoslavia collapsed in a series of bloody wars.
Elena Fajt graduated at the University of Ljubljana and did postgraduate studies in Austria and Denmark. She has exhibited in venues nationally and internationally, including New York, Philadelphia, Arnstadt (D), Trieste (I) and Labin (CRO). She was invited as artist in residence in New York and Philadelphia. She works as an Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana /Slovenia.