Danica Dakić
The solo exhibition STENA DANICA by Danica Dakić carefully connects and interweaves her older works with the new artistic productions based on site-specific research conducted in Gothenburg. The artworks are intertwined with a common motif of the ship, the journey.
The exhibition opens with the work REFLUX I, made in the tableau vivant (‘living picture’) genre that Dakić often uses in her works as a storytelling technique.
MS BERLIN, presented on the third floor, is the work that can be seen as the connective tissue of the entire exhibition. Based on the autobiographical story of Danica Dakić, whom in the early 1990s, when the break-up of socialist Yugoslavia and the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was taking place, worked as a singer on the famous cruise ship “MS Berlin”. The single valid document she had was a “ship passport”, which, however, did not allow her to get off the ship at any point on the Baltic route – Sweden, Finland, or Russia.
The static film AUTOPORTRAIT presented on the fourth floor, reveals the face of a woman in a classic three-quarter profile. Instead of eyes, she has a second mouth telling two fairy tales in parallel, in German and in Bosnian. Although the self-portrait suggests that this work is about the artist herself, it, in fact, speaks about experiences relevant to many people today, such as belonging, migration, mobility, and living in multiple languages and cultures.
The ship “Stena Danica”, which passes through Gothenburg daily, was a direct inspiration for the new artistic production STENA DANICA, in the main exhibition space, Katedralen (The Cathedral). This unusual coincidence of sharing her name with the ship has been the guiding idea that sparked the artist´s collaboration with composer Bojan Vuletić for the new site-specific sound sculpture.
Relying on her keen sense for the architecture of the exhibition space, Dakić translates the questions of belonging and language, and the relationship between human and machine into a promenade deck of her own ship of STENA DANICA which offers a multi-layered visual and audio-spatial journey.
Text by Anja Bogojević, curator of the exhibition together with Amila Puzić
Do you want to see more? You can see more images from the exhibition in our Flickr album. You can also find albums with photos from our other exhibitions on our Flickr.
Danica Dakić’s scope of work extends from video and film to photography and installation. Her work is based on performative and collaborative processes exploring concepts of cultural memory, identity, language and history as well as social roles in their ongoing changes.
Her solo exhibitions have debuted, e.g. at the Bosnia-Herzegovina pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale 2019, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a.M. 2013, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 2011, Generali Foundation, Vienna 2010 and at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 2009. She has participated in group exhibitions such as the documenta 12 2007, 8th and 11th Istanbul Biennial 2003 and 2009, Sydney Biennale 2010, and São Paulo Biennial 2014.
In 2021 she received the Rome Prize of the Villa Massimo. Dakić lives in Düsseldorf and Sarajevo.
The exhibitionen is presented with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Science North Rhine-Westphalia
