OBSERVING MONUMENTS
In her first italian solo exhibition Renata Poljak (Split, 1974) presents her last video Observing Monuments.
A poetic reflection, at the same time politic, about what we believe, about the symbols that represent us and our relationship with the faith in something or someone. The Statue of Liberty in New York, the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, Tito, his birthplace, his portrait. Symbols of devotion, of memory and representation.
From the video Memories (Tito, tata) -1999, through drawings and photographs, between autobiography and documentary, Renata Poljak tells us about Croatia, ex-Yugoslavia, about the difficulty of change and the condition of membership.
The exhibition takes its title from the photographic diptych I Need You to Believe in Something (2008). Made in 2001, the photographs represent two children playing the violin during a concert in the school of Albanian village Fier. The setting and the atmosphere are the same lived by Renata Poljak in Yugoslavia in the early '80s, during the period of strong faith in socialism and Tito, in the years which the Tito’s portrait stayed everywhere. Now in 2001, behind the children, stands a new symbol of the desire, the stars of European Union.
Renata Poljak usually works with the video, as she confirmed me, the feeling with this media has been instantaneous. Her formal approach, between the personal narration and the documentary, is a condition of necessity in which her experiences and her point of view give form to movies and videos belonging to the documentary form and genre....
As I tried to synthesize during my last conversation with Renata, since political contents need to assume a political form in her work, such contents find in the documentary their (and obvious) context. Her necessity to analyze and watch the world through the video-camera spawns the reflection about our society, about socialism, about Tito, about belief, about monuments…
Francesca di Nardo: Born in Yugoslavia, you live in Paris, you work in New York and your passport is Croatian. Could you tell me a bit of your life and experiences?
Renata Poljak: Well, I’ve lived in Split where I attended and completed (in 1997) the Academy of Fine Arts and, subsequently, I worked there as an assistant in the Drawing Department for one year. I think I learned a lot about art and myself there. We were, say, left alone in front of the blank sheet for 4 years. I think the Academy taught me how to think about art and questions that are important to me. Every day in front of the white paper you have to invent yourself, your subjects, intentions, meanings…Sure, I moved from mimetic drawings and paintings towards something else… and I had never heard of video when I made my first one. Nevertheless, I think this experience was crucial – in term of thinking about art. The video came when my professor told me about a summer workshop with some German students from Aachen, and he choose me to go there to make a video. I remember I asked “what is the video?” And he said “come on, it’s like a short movie, just go and make it”. ... That was in ‘96, the video was called I, the Housewife! and it had a lot of success. Later, in ‘98/’99 I applied with success for the E.R.B.A.N. post-diploma in Nantes (France) international program co-directed by Robert Fleck.
...That’s how I left Croatia for the first time – and Yugoslavia forever.
Since then, I’ve been living between Croatia and other Countries.… in the mean time I also traveled a lot, made projects, exhibitions, short residencies. All this influenced my work and my personality of course. Being a stranger its not a strange position for me, since so many people around me (artists, curators..) are all in the same situation, times have changed, everybody migrates, that’s how we construct our identity now, not just by being born somewhere but through the experience that life brings. We are all strangers somehow, and especially in New York you don’t even notice that you are a stranger (and I realize that maybe I feel as a stranger in Europe), since everybody has en accent, comes from different places or has parents who are coming from different countries, and this all reflects into ones identity, New York is just so full of stories, and your story is just one of them. And that’s great.
...
FdN: The content of your works is a political reflection concerning the concept of devotion, of memory and representation... what do you believe in? Did you believe in Tito?
RP: Yes, well, the whole film (Observing Monuments) is about that question, that was a reason to start the project, what do I believe in? What does one believe in, today? Sure I believed in Tito, that was easy. He (his photo, his voice was everywhere) and this belief was just so evident and undoubted in the Yugoslavia of my childhood. It is also so easy to believe when you are a small child. Then, later, you grow. Things change and you doubt. Now I always doubt, I ask questions, I think this is what art is about.
RP: Nowadays everything can be a monument, it depends from the significance that we give it. I like to watch how official monuments change with time and they are suppose to have one meaning. I am interested in the representation of the history via monuments. By Observing Monuments I believe we can learn a lot about present society.