Sweet Ideologies 2
mixed media, plaster, iron, glass
100 х 50 cm (changeable)
2018
The central place of the installation is occupied by Virgin Mary – Madonna, an authentic Catholic statue of the Virgin. The very year in which the sculpture was made, 1941, corresponds to the beginning of People’s Liberation War and the socialist Revolution as an attempt at establishing a new ideology whose leading symbol was a five-pointed star. A large number of five-pointed stars is lined in preserve jars. In these jars, they look agreeable, edible, benign. The way in which the new regime, under this symbol and following the victorious Revolution, imposed the new ideology was certainly not sweet, edible, and agreeable. Reshaping the man alone, the believer, an individual person, was not enough; the stamp of the new authorities also had to be imprinted on one of the basic symbols of religion – Virgin Mary. Hence her head is surrounded by a five-pointed-star-shaped halo.
The misfortune of this part of the world is that exclusivity is part of every system. Perhaps the time has come to stand up in defence of the five-pointed star.
Dragan Srdić
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-282/08.10.2021.
Inventory No.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dragan Srdić (1958, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy, Art History Department. Since the 1980s he has been exhibiting at various group exhibitions (1989 XV Rijeka Biennale of Young Artists; 1996 A View of the Wall in Rex Centre, Belgrade; 2001 Dossier Serbia in Vienna, Berlin, Belgrade; 41st Belgrade October Salon in 2000; 42nd Belgrade October Salon in 2001; 45th Belgrade October Salon in 2004; 2010 Spring Exhibition of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia in Belgrade) as well as solo exhibitions (1988 The Last Supper in the Gallery of Students’ Cultural Centre in Belgrade; 1993 Early Works in the Gallery of Students’ Cultural Centre in Belgrade; 1995 Guernica in the Gallery of Students’ Cultural Centre in Belgrade; 1998 VPI in Belgrade Youth Centre; 2000 Anatomy Class in the Fine Arts Gallery of Belgrade’s Cultural Centre; 2005 Metropolis in Belgrade’s Zvono Gallery; Josip Broz Tito 1980-2008 in Belgrade’s Remont Gallery; 2016 Short Cuts in Belgrade’s Ozon Gallery; 2019 Wailing Wall / More than surrealism, more than zenitism in Belgrade’s Grad Cultural Centre).