Participating artists:
Kristina Bajilo, Nikola Balberčáková, Sophia Giovannitti, Đejmi Hadrović, Aja Janković, Merlinka Working Group (Pavle Banović, Marija Iva Gocić, Leah Rivka Lapiower, Sara Pantović, Chloé Sassi), Milica Mijajlović Živković, Pennie Key, Jessica Stoya, Zuzana Svatík
Curator: Jelisaveta Rapaić
*at the opening of the exhibition, there will be a pole dance lecture performance by an artist Aja Janković, starting at 7:30 p.m
The second edition of The Rotten Smell is You group exhibition, which is realised in collaboration with the Cultural Center of Belgrade, welcomes some changes in relation to its first presentation at Kunsthalle Bratislava (5.9-16.10.2023). The artistic positions were carefully readjusted (rebalanced) to include additional geographies and histories, and to emphasise the gaps which exist within the local context. The second volume of this exhibition also came to creation as a direct reaction and an urgency to the growing favoritism and haze around the rise of right wing politics in 2024. By examining and uncovering the interior turmoil and the generational gap within the feminist movement, this exhibition explores the underlying frenzie of the right wing appropriation and mirror worlds of post-truth and conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, The Rotten Smell is You, builds a storyline incorporating different experiences and expressions to analyse the gap between the third and the fourth wave feminists that is mostly noticed in the discourse regarding transness, sex work and hyperfemininity, topics on which the movement fails to stand united, failing its own offspring.
*In her recent book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein uses he term Mirror World to describe our destabilized present rife with doubles and confusion, where far right movements playact solidarity with the working class, AI-generated content blurs the line between genuine and spurious, New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers further scramble our familiar political allegiances, and so many of us project our own carefully curated digital doubles out into the social media sphere.