Page 33 - La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
Zenica Trilogy
THE CLEANER, STILL Commissioner: Senka Ibrišimbegovic, Ars Aevi Museum for Contemporary Art Sarajevo.
PHOTOGRAPH 1, Curators: Anja Bogojevic, Amila Puzic, Claudia Zini.
COURTESY DANICA Exhibitor: Danica Dakic.
DAKIÅ
Venue: Palazzo Francesco Molon Ca’ Bernardo, San Polo 2184/A

Zenica Trilogy will present three video works: the Cleaner, Zgrada/
The Building, and Scena/The Stage, as well as Zenica Mapa/The
Portfolio – a print portfolio, reflecting on the contemporary post-
transition reality in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian city of Zenica. Once
one of the largest and most important industrial and modernist
projects in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the
urbanization and demographic developments of the so-called city
of “mud and steel” were driven by the steelworks “Željezara”.
The period after the Bosnian War (1992–95) left Zenica facing high
rates of unemployment, extreme air pollution, as well as a general
feeling of resignation among the population. “In her approach to the
Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion project Danica Dakc investigates
the heritage of modernity, from Bauhaus to the utopian paradigms
of international and Yugoslav socialist modernism. It exemplifies
her search to reactivate utopian potentials by establishing a poetic
relationship to the Bosnian post-war reality. Taking a cue from Walter
Gropius’ Total Theatre (1926/27) and extending it to a space for
social activation, the dividing lines between stage and audience, the
real and the imagined city, are dissolved. (excerpt)

BRAZIL
SWINGUERRA STILL_01.JPG Swinguerra
BÁRBARA WAGNER &
BENJAMIN DE BURCA Commissioner: José Olympio da Veiga Pereira, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.
SWINGUERRA , 2019 Curator: Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro.
STILL FROM FILM Exhibitor: Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca.
COURTESY: FUNDAÇÃO Venue: Giardini
BIENAL DE SÃO PAULO

Although its production began in late 2018, Swinguerra has
been in gestation since 2015, when, during the research for
their first audiovisual work, Faz que vai [Set to Go] (2015), the
duo made contact with the dance trend known as swingueira. In
this cultural phenomenon from Recife, dance groups consisting
of from 10 to 50 people train rigorously to perform in annual
competitions. “Swingueira is a sort of updating of a set of
traditions such as square dancing, the samba school and the trio
elétrico [mobile sound systems], practiced autonomously and
independently by youths who get together regularly in sports
courts on the outskirts of Recife,” explains Bárbara Wagner. “Born
from the need for social integration, this phenomenon includes
the experience of identity and has arrived at the stage and on
Instagram as a sort of spectacle fed by the mainstream, but
which survives absolutely outside of it,” she adds.“Swinguerra
presents a profound and empathetic panorama of contemporary
Brazilian culture, at a moment of significant political and social
tension. The predominantly black bodies on the screen (many
of them of nonbinary gender) are in many ways at the center
of contemporary disputes on visibility, legal rights and self-
representation,” says curator Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro. (excerpt)

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