Opening: Saturday October 14, 2023 | 11:00am – 5:00pm
On view: Friday October 13 – Sunday October 22
Friday October 13 – Sunday October 15: 11:00am – 5:00pm
Friday October 20 – Sunday October 22: 11:00am – 5:00pm
And in between upon appointment (Contact: info@residencyunlimited.org)
KODA/RU House, #404B Colonels Row | Click here for access to Governors Island
A group show bringing together 2023 resident artists Milica Jankovic, Orly Ruaimi and Jakub Jansa from Montenegro, United States and Czech Republic.
Milica Jankovic: Inherited Memory
In this video installation, Jankovic conjures the inherited memories of her family through the shutdown of a factory manufacturing refrigerators that was located in the city of Cetinje, Montenegro – a symbol of the working class in former Yugoslavia, that remained uninhabited for the past thirty years. By digging into factory archives, family memories, and former workers’ narratives the artist uses those sounds and images, reshaping them through the prism of her own experience. On the building where the majority of working-class families used to live, the windows get transformed into portals of display where symbolic images, video, and sounds merge contrasting time periods. The work is configured in the space in such a way that it mirrors questions of how memory transmitted from one generation to the next shapes the way one sees and thinks of future utopias we all are condemned to.
“Like a matrix that collects and absorbs what is happening in the environment, I was collecting everyday sounds, videos, and images, that in the process of overlapping created ulterior ones, emerging with new meanings. These meanings were shaped through the prism of what I lived, of my past memories, and the ones that I have inherited. By mirroring the questions of how the memory that we inherited from our parents shaped the way we see and think of the future brought me to this archive of carefully stored domestic breviary’s.”
Click here for Milica Jankovic’s bio.
Orly Ruaimi: Moving Target (2023)
Ruaimi’s installation draws inspiration from New York’s architectural symbols and Governors Island’s military history. During her New York City artist residency, she noticed the pervasive scaffolding that seems almost permanent despite its temporary nature. Ruaimi chose to brings the scaffolding design indoors, addressing the fragility of the deteriorating house without fixing it. As well as creating the idea of a “target” by the elements of the structure centering on an external focal point outside of the left window in the room, turning every passerby into a visual target.
Click here for Orly Ruaimi’s bio.
Jakub Jansa: Garden of Problems (2017-present)
The artist presents two episodes from his continuing exhibition project Club of Opportunities launched in 2017 starring hybrid human-vegetable creatures who question cultural, class and authority relations. The Club crosses boundaries of genres, from drama to absurd comedy, and employs fiction, humor and grotesque elements to narrate stories relating to contemporary social struggles.
Concurrently, the public will have the opportunity to consult Jansa’s just released artist book The Garden of Problems, uncovering similar themes addressed in the Club of Opportunities with an editorial format that includes images of its iterations along with essays of invited authors including Michal Novotný, Julie Béna, Kamil Nábělek, Noemi Purkrábková, Jozef Mrva Jr., Ernestyna Orlowska, Klára Vlasáková, Jan Bělíček.
Click here for Jakub Jansa’s bio.
Click below to see images from the exhibition
This program benefits from the support of The Trust for Mutual Understanding.
