Balkan's Mirror: Face-Identity (interview's summary in English)
National Museum's Gallery in Kraljevo exhibition (Fall 2002)
Interview with Ljubiša Simovic, Museum's custodian and exhibition's co-author (together with Darko Radosavljevic and Danijela Pureševic)

This exhibition's context and reason stretches towards grounds of regional defining of Balkan culture in our times... but had the knowledge of some sort about the Balkan artistic links, existed before 1991?

In the very beginning, I have chosen the area (Balkan and the states formed on the ex-Yugoslavia's ground), the medias (new technologies - video, digital arts and photography) and the exhibition's topic (Face - Identity).
Firstly, Balkan's grounds, which are defined here as the grounds for collecting exhibition's material, in the last decade of the XX century suffered often very horrible and tragic political and military conflict, and also tempestuous and painful system changes and transitions, economic crises and "depressive hopes"... It is also interesting that major forces do not desist from their "major concerns" for these grounds, from their need for pedagogical and cynical lectures about democracy, humanism, human rights, tolerance... which are all achievements born on these grounds and spread from them further in the world. In the same time, these are grounds where ancient states collide and hybridize with newer cultures and traditions, the grounds where strong and authentically artistic identities exist - the grounds, to put it simply, with magnificent cultural heritage and great artistic energy. It will always be the sufficient reason for the more careful listening of the artistic streams that spring from grounds like this. For me personally it was the reason to try, after a long interval, to organize and to ground the manifestation (for a longer period, I hope) where the new medias' art of the European Southeastern region's countries will be presented.
In addition, "Face-Identity" theme emerges as an answer to a constant need of (especially younger) artists to cope with the problem of identity.

How much this causes the abandoning of the traditional medias and how the technological progress (individual use of computers) reflects on the work's effects?

I do not think that, in the system of arts, the abandonment of the traditional medias should be seen as a betrayal or treason. If there is some sort of conditioning, then it is attached for the natural and appropriate use of new technological possibilities. It is also the result of communicability and communicableness being art's dominant features, and the artist's sensibility for widening the language and his constant self-questioning - about the analytical relation towards the (meta)linguistical structure on one side, and about the synthetical relation towards the genesis of art. (The complete survey of the exhibition's participants from Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Rumania, Greece, alongside with the data about their works and countries of their origin could be find on the website www.ogledalo.org.yu)

According to the "Face-Identity" exhibition's materials, could we discuss the epoch in which the uncertainty and irony (those patterns of meaning in the contemporary visual arts) triumphed? Is there a connection with the post-conceptualistic approaches and themes and understanding of the regional realities' construction?

Marija Ćalić: WHISPER

(...) Visual arts' space could be one of the most suitable spaces for this, since visual language could be understood more easily and symbolism of its signs could be read more easily, sometimes in very different cultural societies.
Exhibition's theme found its source and stimulus in the Kosta Bogdanovic's study "Figure and Face in Visual Understanding" (to be published by Mirror Center). Exhibition's course led into the concrete and specific search for identity on this region's ground, which through years contained plenty misunderstandings and very little of that simple and everyday understanding, recognizing and closeness. As it could be seen in exhibited works, a final result will deny these, maybe even expected, crucial differences between the works of the artists originating from various traditions, religions, nations, and cultures. If we neglect delicate various positions in language, we can mix all participants' cards and recognize the anxieties and nauseas which art can always sense, and which hang like the verdict over our traditionally inadaptable Balkan mental composition. (...)