GENOGRAM english

G E NOG R AM

G EN OG R AM

ARTIST STATEMENT

“Genogram� as a series of family photographs, landscapes and places we observe from aside and from a time distance of almost 20 years is not a photographic series. For me it is a process, defragmentation, processing and finally confrontation with the past through the mere fact that a completely intimate story is made public through the exhibition. Through displaying it I bring up traumas and heritage while through objectivization I achieve an outside perspective and control.

Memories and photographs come out of me and they are exhibited on the wall, thus becoming past, some outside objects which give me a certain feeling of control placed outside of me. I ritually bury them on the wall.

Genogram was a part of a collective exhibition “Exam” Gallery SC, September 2012, Zagreb, Croatia

In the series “Genogram” I question inherited memories and events that were given and which marked my life and the life of my parents. Several years ago through systemic psychotherapy I was made aware of two neuralgic points which significantly marked me. The first one is the death of my sister Aleksandra who died at the age of six two years before my birth. The other is leaving Zenica when I was twelve at the very beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Being a painful story for my parents, particularly for my mother, my sister’s death was a kind of taboo in the family. Her photographs and stories about her were deeply repressed even though Aleksandra was present during my entire childhood mainly through a certain fear of my parents. The story about refuge and the war is a story about the loss of identity, uprooting and a new beginning. My personal role in these events is little because one happened before me and during the other I was a child. They were both given and my role in them is passive.

This work is a meeting place and an attempt to search for an answers that might give me a personal resolution eventually. This is a confrontation with a so far unidentified place of sorrow. Howevere, sometimes there are no clear answers. “Puzzles” are scattered on the wall, I feel relief in confession and my personal progress is in the confrontation both through photography and through hidden family photos and through writing this text. THe work itself becomes self-help and the place of my personal catharsis regardless of whether I found the answer or not.

The exhibition consists of 68 framed photographs. For the exhibition it is needed a wall minimally ten meters long and two meters high.

The exhibits are original family photos from 1945 until now, postcards and newly made landscapes 40x50 cm. All the landscapes were photographed in the last three years.

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY Davor Konjikušić. Born 1979. Received BA in photography at the Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb where he currently attends MA in photography. He works as a journalist. He has authored several documentaries.

He was a finalist of Photodays Rovinj 2010 in the category of professional concepts and in 2011 in the category of portraits. He is the winner of the third prize of Young Creative Chevrolet 2010 in Paris, France.

Solo exhibitions: 2010.

Gender Matters, Erste Foundation, Vienna, Austria 2009.

Corridor X, KC Grad, Belgrade, Serbia Collective exhibitions: 2012.

A Personal Gaze In Mutual Space, SI Fest, Monte della Pietà, Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy Industrial heritage, Museum of the City of Zagreb, Croatia New names, ULUPUH, Zagreb, Croatia 2011.

False Idols, Dom Omladine, Belgrade Photodays, Museum of modern and contemporary art, Rijeka, Croatia Photodays, Museum of arts and crafts, Zagreb, Croatia New names, ULUPUH, Zagreb, Croatia Photodays, Multimedia centre, Rovinj, Croatia Photodays, Gallery Knežev dvor, Rab, Croatia Zagreb’s neighbourhoods, Museum of the City of Zagreb, Croatia 2010.

Fashion closet, gallery HGK, Centre for design, Zagreb, Croatia Photodays, Museum of arts and crafts, Zagreb, Croatia Photodays, Multimedia centre, Rovinj, Croatia New names, ULUPUH, Zagreb, Croatia Organ of sight, ASA Art gallery, Sarajevo 2009.

Organ of sight, K.U.N.S. gallery, Rijeka, Croatia Organ of sight, SC gallery, Zagreb, Croatia Miramida Days, Groznjan, Istria, Croatia New names, ULUPUH gallery, Zagreb, Croatia

Davor Konjikušić Petra i Tome Erdody 15 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia +385 99 8020 533 davorko@gmail.com www.davorko.net