proven particularly challenging in Croatia, as well as wider across former Yugoslavia. After an economic and political crisis in the 1980s and the rise of nationalism, Yugoslavia broke up along its republics’ borders that eventually led to creation of independent states, including Croatia in 1991. Inevitably, there seem to be irreconcilable tension between ways of approaching memory and history of recent events in a re-articulation of the collective remembering, including the so called Yugoslav wars with ethnic conflicts fought inside the territory of the former Yugoslavian republics between 1991 and 2001. A re-historicization process needs to be contextualised in the ‘present of memory’ and its fragmentary futures. Similarly, there is memory vs history tension inherent in the re-articulation of subsequent political processes whereby constituent republics declared independence, and local nationalisms continued to surge with embedding Capitalism in the background. At the same time, people have grappled with ongoing challenges associated with acclimatization to the neo-liberal reality and economical struggle in daily living. Artists have been invited to investigate the richness and complexity in constructing the present, in relation to time, memory and history. Only by accepting competing or even parallel narratives in historical records, as well as concerning personal archives, we could argue that a more nuanced and subtle version of the present of memory can emerge. Nineteen artists linked with the cultural scene of Zagreb and Croatia, including the now deceased Edita Schubert, are showcased in the exhibition. Zagreb has a rich history including being a Roman settlement dating back to the 1st century AD; now formally one of European capitals whereby a hybrid multicultural tradition is interwoven with contemporary living. A point of departure for the exhibition stems from my ongoing research in a political articulation of artistic practice as well as intervention in theory, attending to recent histories of post-Socialist Europe (Kosmala, 2014). The selected artists explore the memory, considering both personal and collective dimensions of remembering as well as engaging with more subjective or rather selective aspects of rewriting historical events. Some memories are situated within particular contextual frameworks; others are inscribed into artefacts, objects as well as in media discourse. The artists take part in re-writing the memory of the present, commenting on contemporary post-Socialist reality. The title of the exhibition Exporting Zagreb, points out the city’s unique geo-political location – reachable within 2 hours by car from Ljubljana, Slovenia, over 3 hours from Budapest,
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Hungary, and 4 hours from Vienna, Austria or Venice, Italy an educational hub at the Central European cross-road with its transient hybrid cultures, made of multiple European influences as well as past and present trends in artistic Diasporas. The works in this exhibition have materialised as complex and diverse responses to the recent history in the region and Capitalism’s colonisation of memory, both at the macro and the micro levels. Some artists explore and comment on the politics of memory in the context of on-going negotiation with the Europeanization project vis a vis distancing from the Yugoslavian-centred historical grand narrative and cultural identity. Other artists enter into a more personalised dialogue with the private, exploring reticent spaces of remembrance, politicising the forgotten and the silenced, or analysing a construction of memory via a more autobiographical approach, or even engaging their private archives. Highlighting the current trends in contemporary art practice, presenting the vibrant artistic environment of Zagreb and Croatia, as well as through Diaspora, embracing further afield, while recognising turbulent local histories, this exhibition points at key transformations in the practice taking place today, contextualised back to the 1970s and the 1980s, acknowledging technological innovations and visual language of transgression in pioneering work of Edita Schubert (1947-2001) – an artist trained in painting and a draughtswoman at the Institute of Anatomy, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb. At the end of 1970, Schubert produced a series of Perforated Canvas, cutting a blue monochrome with a surgical scalpel and attached the triangular cut-outs to the ‘face’ of her painting with an adhesive plaster, reminiscent of a starry midnight sky. Perhaps wanting to reveal the reverse face of the image, as Leonida Kovač, curator of the major retrospective of Edita Schubert’s work in 2015 at Galerija Kolovicevi dvori in Zagreb pointed out: ‘She was interested in the image as a relation between perception, medium, discourse and memory, irreducible to the category of painting; the space in between the visible and the seen, time in the body of the image or the very substance of which time is composed. Humanoid? This is why she explored the origins of images; the in-between spaces of realism and the Real’ (Kovač, 2015, 25-26). Schubert stated herself that most of her works in fact can be characterised as a dissection. Unfortunately, her works are little known beyond Croatia. While pioneering artists such Edita Schubert were experimenting with medium or Sanja Iveković engaged with social