Exhibition and Performance “Individual Utopias”

Exhibition by artist Lala Raščić – Individual Utopias is a multimedia exhibition created in 2008 and was inspired by artist’s visit to the city of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Namely, she has been invited to participate at the workshop Art and Survival, initiated by one Italian organisation and realised in cooperation with Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art. This workshop intended to foster collaboration between artists and PTSD patients from the two therapeutic centres for mental health in East and West Mostar.

Over the course of the workshop the artist realised that events in which she participated and witnessed have strong dramatic potential so she wrote a script for the audio drama. Besides performance and video work, document of the performance by Lala Rascic and band Vuneny, in other art documents that are telling the story of her Mostar experience are included: series of 28 drawings, portraits of the audio-drama protagonists based on real characters, reliefs – scenes taken over from the video footage made for the short documentary about the workshop, video work with testimonials of some of the organisers of the project, art book and slide projection of the kiln that has the main role in the audio drama. Photo of the kiln was taken two years after the workshop took place in Mostar. All this elements are creating one narrative and telling the story…

Exhibition Individual Utopias is an art document that combines real and fabricated facts and problematisizes absurd and tragic-comical aspects of the everyday life in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. This work talks about the presence of the international community in this country, characteristics of one divided city (city of Mostar) and limited power of art. Trough the title Individual Utopias the artist portraits unfulfilled expectations that are concerning herself but also all of the protagonists and creators of the event that served her to tell this story.

Individual utopias in Mostar

Individual utopias in Novi Sad

Individual utopias in Tirana