Духовна Деколонизација (Spiritual Decolonisation – Part I)

Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*
Духовна Деколонизација (Spiritual Decolonisation – Part I)
Installation, 5 drawings, 2 hanging sculptures, metallic display
2021

In English

The installation by Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* pays homage to the few women from Yugoslavia who took part in the exhibitions of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and reflects on the position of women artists in utopian artistic or political movements of the 20th century.

In the NAM, culture and art played an important role: they acknowledged cultural equality, the struggle against cultural imperialism, and a cultural heritage different from the classic Western modernity, thus embodying the movement’s strong principles. Even though it promoted women’s independence, the invisibility of women artists in the NAM’s archives shows how gender equality was still looked down on. Only seven artists from Yugoslavia took part in the NAM’s exhibitions. Hoffner’s drawings are based on the works of three of them: Ankica Oprešnik (1919–2005), Zdenka Golob (1928–2019), and Tinca Stegovec (1927–2019). Rather than trying to give an exact reproduction of their original technique, style, or format, the artist focused on learning from them; from a tradition different to the one she* had encountered in her* own art education in order to question the dominance of the Western art system.

*A nonbinary person on the crossroads of those born in 1980 in Paraćin (Yugoslavia), who were moved in 1989, and received capitalist citizenship (Austria) with a new name in 2002.