The Gandy Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by Danica
Dakic (born in 1962 in Sarajevo, lives in Düsseldorf and Sarajevo) in
Slovakia.
This exhibition presents video and photographic works from the artist's
project Role-Taking, Role-Making (2004-2005). In this project Danica Dakic
takes as her starting point images/stereotypes of gypsies to interrogate the
relationship between traditional social conceptions and the individual's
existence in a Europe shaped by political change and the clash of different
cultural codes.
The constitutive elements of the film Role-Taking, Role-Making (2005) are the
film locations: the Roma enclaves Preoce and Plementina in Kosovo and the
Roma Theatre Pralipe in Cologne, Germany. Role patterns, which create
political realities, are reflected as well as the actual conditions under
which the people live in both places - the ghetto of the refugee camps in
Kosovo and the theatre in exile in Germany which is threatened by insolvency - as well as many facets of the theatrical and photographic mise-en-scËne.
The film's structure echoes the narrative traditions of Sinti and Roma in
which the real and the unreal mix.
For her photo series La Grande Galerie (2004), taken as part of the project,
Danica Dakic engaged Roma from the refugee camp in Plementina to pose in
front of a large-scale reproduction of the painting Imaginary View of the
Grande Galerie in the Louvre as a Ruin by Hubert Robert (1733-1808). Dakic's
work derives its aptness from confronting two different conceptions of ruin:
in Hubert Robert's depiction of the Grande Galerie in the Louvre in Paris in
picturesque decay, the museum is transported into a timeless realm, which
transfigures his conception of culture into something awe-inspiring. In the
photo people stand in front of this painting who have been reduced to living
lives deprived of all rights, reduced to bare existence. Yet the way in which
these Roma stand there and gaze at the observer reveals their dignity. Thus
in a further sense this work is not only a critique of the politics of
exclusion but also an expression of the fragility of human existence.
The catalogue Role-Taking, Role-Making (German/English) on the project is
published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg (ISBN 3-938821-26-4).
Danica Dakic's work investigates the interfaces of cultural and personal, and
political and geographical identity. Using a variety of media (photography,
film, video and sound installations), she interrogates the construction of
identity and "home" that results from the impacts of social change,
globalisation, and war, on the basis of her own experience of emigration. A
recurring element is her insistence on the decisive importance of language,
the spoken word, in the formation of identity.
Danica Dakic has already exhibited at numerous solo and group exhibitions
including Skulpturen Biennale Münsterland, Germany (2005); Be What You Want
but Stay Where You Are, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Holland (2005); Die
Regierung. Paradiesische Handlungsräume, Secession, Vienna, Austria (2005);
How Do We Want to Be Governed? MAC, Miami, USA (2004); 8th International
Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2003); a cappella, National Gallery of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (2003); In den Schluchten des
Balkan, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2003); 2nd Valencia
Biennial, Valencia, Spain (2003); Home, SCCA, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
(2002); Ich ist etwas Anderes, Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany (2000);
After the Wall, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin,
Germany (1999-2001).
