The Documentary as an Illusion • Sonja Beloš and Nikola Gajić
Artget Gallery, Republic Square 5/1
Opening: Thursday, 16 March, 19h
16. 3 – 22. 4. 2023.
Sonja Beloš and Nikola Gajić
The Documentary as an Illusion. An Experiment about the Future
Srđan Veljović, Artget artistic director for 2023
The photographs by Sonja Beloš and Nikola Gajić are dedicated to their experience of studying at the Academy of Fine Arts and living in the town of Trebinje. A group of young people is mostly able to freely shape their everyday life. The photographed situations could be described as leisure. There are subjectivities peeking out of this leisure. The manners of its manifestation mark the location of the horizon of the possible, and the imaginative; that of freedom.
The sequence of ephemeral recordings making this photographic series by Beloš and Gajić oscillates between those photographs that remain linked to the moment of their taking, thus receding into the past, and those anticipating the future. These two courses and the temporal schism they create serve as the point of entry into the story. The photos of a girl with wings and of young men in a supermarket trolley at a construction site are indeed this flash that stir the careless present towards the future. The ways of anticipating our own future are actually those we use to accept the unknown: we are either anxious, or we try to embrace it. The most that has been attained is the shaky ironic distance from the consumerist future. The threatening future floods the presence, making it short of breath.
In this documentary series, using photography as the medium in which they perceive reality, Beloš and Gajić have problematized the instability of perception itself and confirmed that subjectivity/authorship/feeling is often what brings us closer to the ever elusive truth.
* SONjA BELOŠ (1994, Kikinda). Participated in group exhibition “New ULUS Members”, “Cvijeta Zuzorić” Art Pavilion, Belgrade 2022; group exhibition “XX Gernik International Art Camp”, “Sectia de Art “Deliu Petroiu”“, Timisoara 2022; group exhibition “Sculptors of Serbia 2022”, “Cvijeta Zuzorić” Art Pavilion, Belgrade2022. She held her solo exhibition titled “Sculptures-Objects-Drawings-Collages”, “Terra” Gallery, Kikinda 2021. As a student of the MA programme at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, she participated in group exhibition “Mastered Out”, in NGVU Belgrade, held solo exhibition “Drawings and Objects”, Blok Gallery, Belgrade and “The Tree of Life of Today and Tomorrow”, online group exhibition in 2020. She graduated (BA) from the Academy of Fine Arts in Trebinje, Department of Sculpture, mentored by Đorđe Arnaut, and she exhibited in “Mini Mo”, International Biennale of Miniature, HDHSK in Mostar 2019; “Three or Four Days”, group exhibition, OKC Abrašević in Mostar 2019; group exhibition “A Group One”, Cultural Centre of Trebinje 2019; “14th International Biennale of Miniature”, Cultural Centre of Gornji Milanovac 2018; “Emotions and Dependency”, People’s University of Vranje, 2018; “All We Could Have Done”, Sophia University, Chiyoda-ky, Tokio 2016; Eco-Colony 2016; Široki Brijeg 2016; Cultural and Natural Heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Banja Luka 2016; Cultural and Natural Heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Trebinje 2016.
NIKOLA GAJIĆ (1996, Kikinda). He finished MA studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Trebinje, Department of Painting, Photography, Drawing and Multimedia Art, where he had also finished BA studies, both his BA and MA mentored by Savo Peković. His exhibitions include group exhibition “4aces“, Pedagogy museum, Beograd, 2020, group exhibition “51st Art Salon of Pančevo ‘Searching?’”, National Museum of Pančevo, Pančevo 2021, group exhibition “Award for Young Artists of Pančevo”, National Museum of Pančevo, Pančevo 2021, solo exhibition “Tamići prošlosti” (TAM Vans of our Past), CC Lab, Novi Sad 2020, group exhibition “Three or Four Days” OKC Abrašević in Mostar, 2019, group exhibition “A Group One”, Trebinje 2019, and group exhibition “TV916 – Deconstruction of context”, Trebinje, 2016.