Gilmore D. Clarke, Unisphere, Queens – New York, 1964, © Photo: Olja Triaška Stefanović, 2023
open qu|art|erly 03.24
Stories from around the Non-Aligned
The project “Stories from around the Non-Aligned” opens with a research residency by Olja Triaška Stefanović at the BHROX bauhaus reuse in Berlin between 29.07. – 11.08.2024. She presents her work in progress as a preview for the planned exhibition taking place on 19.11. – 15.12.2024. The residency is part of the “Open Qu|art|erly” (OQ3.24) studio residency program at BHROX. Both the residency and the upcoming exhibition are realized in cooperation with BHROX bauhaus reuse and National Gallery Prague together with Czech Centers Berlin and as a Milestone-Project within “ETOM NEB Lab”. The “ETOM NEB Lab” is an official Lab-project of the “New European Bauhaus” (NEB) in the framework of “ETOM – European Triennial of Modernism”.
The residency and exhibition “Stories from around the Non-Aligned” maps the intersection of Yugoslavia with global politics and the Global South, particularly through the lens of the Non-Aligned Movement. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of now approx. 120 countries that were originally not aligned with either of the two power blocs of the Cold War. In 1961, the Non-Aligned Movement was formally established at the First Summit held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The twenty-five countries that attended the summit included, among others, Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yugoslavia.
Olja Triaška Stefanović is questioning which aspects of Yugoslavia’s history have been forgotten or overlooked, and how individuals of her generation identify with the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement, to what aspects was NAM a utopia and how it was present in the daily lives of Yugoslavians. She will cover topics such as solidarity projects, exchanges, and the meaning of peaceful coexistence – one of the pillars of the NAM. The residency and exhibition lecture is part of a larger interdisciplinary artistic project tracing and examining the legacies and remnants of the NAM in the contemporary former Yugoslavia, New York (United Nations) and Berlin that will be presented as an exhibition at the BHROX bauhaus reuse (Berlin), and the book Yutopislavia: intimate stories of non-alignment (2024). The ongoing research is open to exploring further relations and positions within the non-European NAM countries.
About the Artist
Olja Triaška Stefanović is head of the Photography Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava and the recipient of the 2022 – 2023 Fulbright Scholarship at Parsons School of Design in New York, where she conducted research related to the Cold War and Non-Alignment Movement. Her research focuses on the photography of architecture and urban space in intersection with the historical, political and cultural context of former Yugoslavia and Central and Eastern Europe. She regularly exhibits both in Slovakia and internationally. She is the author of Brotherhood and Unity(2020) and Yutopislavia: intimate stories of non-alignment (2024).
