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VAM40, Art Gallery of Mississauga
"This photograph masterfully deploys light and shadow to suggest the trauma that results in the aftermath of armed conflict. Its careful composition brings attention to a building's façade, darkened in shadow but with several suggestive, open, light-filled windows, and a figure that surveys a landscape of debris. After the war, this is an image that suggests both the futility of attempting to rebuild one's life and the ever-present possibility that life must persist."
John Armstrong, Jayne Wilkinson, and Faisal Anwar
VAM40, Art Gallery of Mississauga
"This photograph masterfully deploys light and shadow to suggest the trauma that results in the aftermath of armed conflict. Its careful composition brings attention to a building's façade, darkened in shadow but with several suggestive, open, light-filled windows, and a figure that surveys a landscape of debris. After the war, this is an image that suggests both the futility of attempting to rebuild one's life and the ever-present possibility that life must persist."
John Armstrong, Jayne Wilkinson, and Faisal Anwar
SAŠA
RAJŠIĆ
SAŠA
RAJŠIĆ
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TO UN-BECOME, 2017
TO UN-BECOME is a multimedia art project which explores the concept of un-becoming through revisiting Operation Storm in Yugoslavia and its consequences over two decades later. In April 2017, Saša Rajšić retraced the journey of over 400km from his family’s first refugee shelter in Serbia to their former home in Croatia. For over two weeks, dawn to dusk, he walked following in reverse the same route which was taken by over 200,000 other refugees two decades previously during Operation Storm.
Homes in ruins surrounded by collapsing walls can still be found in Bosnia and in Herzegovina and Croatia. These images evoked a stream of suppressed memories and emotions and inspired elaborate visions that would otherwise have remained unprovoked. This journey merged the evidence of war with Rajšić's own memories, both actual and constructed; it created a ‘visual noise’ that became his truth during the walk. He decided to walk not to test his own stamina, but rather to surrender the experience to the will of nature. He tasked himself not to merely move between two points, but to temporarily adopt a way of being in which both facts and imagination merged.
In 2017, the border between Serbia and Croatia was once again a place where humanity was at its darkest. Thousands of refugees were denied entry to the European Union and were in temporary refugee camps in Serbia. Some of them were living alongside long-uprooted Serbian refugees facing over twenty years in exile.
TO UN-BECOME, 2018
Publication
Saša Rajšić and Vitalis Neufeld
Softcover
8 x 10" (203,2 x 254 mm)
108 pp
42 b&w photos
Self-published
Printed in Canada
ISBN: 978-1-7752673-0-0
Edition of 100
Cambridge ON
Spring 2018
1/5
TO UN-BECOME, 2017
HD video
Duration: 15 min 20 sec
Vitalis Neufeld
video, editing, and post-production
Bojan Stanković
sound and original music
Watch Now
EVENTS
JULY 18-AUGUST 29, 2020
A+ Online Festival of Video Art: Mobility÷Death÷Mobility
A+ Works of Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, MY
MARCH 16, 2019
Serbian Book Fair Toronto
Hivers, Toronto ON
FEBRUARY 25, 2019
Oxford Transitional Justice Research, Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law
Oxford University, Oxford UK
OCTBER 19-NOVEMBER 16, 2018
17th Annual Juried Art Exhibition
Cambridge Centre for the Arts, Cambridge ON
OCTOBER 17-DECEMBER 9, 2018
Scan Photobooks 2018, Al Tingaldo 2, Port of Tarragona
SCAN, Tarragona ES
JULY 24-27, 2018
IASFM17: 17th Conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration
Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
Laboratory for Study of Culture, Gender, and Borders
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki GR
JUNE 22-JULY 31, 2018
Reality Exchange Group Exhibition
Fifty Dots Gallery, Barcelona ES
JUNE 7-10, 2018
Law at the Crossroads: Annual Meeting on Law and Society
Sheraton Centre, Toronto ON
MAY 8-12, 2018
Recall, Reflect, Return: International Performance Symposium
Khalil Skakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah PL
APRIL 10-MAY 4, 2018
Ontario Society of Artists 145th Annual Juried Exhibition
John B, Aird Gallery, Toronto ON
MARCH 25, 2018
You Are Here: Interdisciplinary Conference on Place, Space, and Embodiment
Creighton University, Omaha NE
JANUARY 11-FEBRUARY 10, 2018
VAM40: Visual Arts Mississauga Fine Arts Juried Show
Art Gallery of Mississauga, Mississauga ON
OCTOBER 10, 2017
Raw and Regional: Artists Speakers Series
Cambridge Art Galleries, Idea Exchange, Cambridge ON
MAY 4-5, 2017
To Un-Become: Multimedia Installation
Auditorium 1, Theatre Academy
University of the Arts Helsinki, Helsinki FI
ABOUT ARTISTS
Saša Rajšić is an independent artist and researcher from Karlovac, Croatia. He currently lives and works in Mississauga, Canada.
Vitalis Neufeld is a photographer interested in the impact of time, personal experiences, and cultural diversity. He is currently based in Berlin, Germany.
Bojan Stanković is a composer, musician, and performer. He is based in Niš, Serbia.
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CONTACT AND ORDERS
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