Robert Jankuloski and Monika Moteska: Landscape Experience

Project holder: NI National Gallery of the Republic of North Macedonia

Commissioner: Dita Starova Qerimi, PhD, Director of the NI National Gallery of the Republic of North Macedonia

Curators: Ana Frangovska, MA, Senior Curator at the National Gallery of the Republic of North Macedonia and Sanja Kojic Mladenov, PhD, Curator Advisor at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Novi Sad, R. Serbia and curator of the Eurovision project at the ifa Stuttgart Department of Visual Arts

“Man is the only being who consciously refers to its existence,” and in the context of the philosophy of existence if we continue with Sartre’s thinking about human freedom in terms of personal choice, choosing opportunities and taking responsibility for events and the risk to human existence, the conclusion or contradiction of the meaninglessness or absurdity of human existence is drawn, which is often confirmed in many examples throughout the history of mankind.

The project Landscape Experience by Robert Jankuloski and Monika Moteska reflects on this topic as well as many other sub-layers. It is a multimedia project that includes video installations, objects and photos. The “aesthetics” of the abandoned (neglected) landscapes, placed in a new context, with new layers of transcription of the dispositions life-death, beautiful-ugly, healthy-poisonous are present in the previous research of the artists, and in the project Landscape Experience they venture even deeper. In addition to the “transformed landscape panopticons,” the project questions the body—man as a symbol of power, but also as a fragile and easily vincible force, as well as the dominance of capital, colonial policies, ideologies and technology that influence the distortion of balance of human life, wildlife and natural environment within the ecosystem. Hence, with this multinational trans-tactical project, the Jankuloski-Moteska tandem point out, through a critical-discursive approach, the dangers that lurk if serious systemic steps are not taken to overcome the greatest challenges of the Anthropocene, which are a tax on capitalism and government policies, the uncontrolled misuse of the natural resources of the planet Earth in the form of mindless wars (explicit or implicit, real or psychological, physical or chemical) in the name of someone’s ideals, in which we are all victims, and most of all the youngest, the innocent and the idealists. Can the beautiful be at the same time insidiously ugly, can the aesthetic become a servant of evil, but with the intention of finding the right path to transform into a warning? All these questions, by re-examining the thesis of the banality of evil, are probably one of the key dispositions of the “Landscape Experience” project.

Robert Jankuloski graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje, Camera Department and earned his Master of Arts degree in 2011 at the University for Audiovisual Arts - ESRA Paris-Skopje-New York, Skopje. In 2000 he founded the Macedonian Centre for Photography. He has had 36 individual exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions around the world: Skopje, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Wien, New York, Istanbul, Brussels, Warsaw, Zagreb, Pancevo, Paris, Roma, Plovdiv, Lyon, Rotterdam… Winner of several awards in the area of visual arts and film. Presently he is full professor at the Faculty of Film Arts at the International University “Europa Prima” in Skopje.

Monika Moteska was born in Prilep, 1971. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Art—Department of Painting in Skopje, 1996. She works with painting, photography, video and installations. She has realized 18 solo exhibitions in: Skopje, Vienna, Prilep, Tetovo, Belgrade, Strumica, New York, Budapest, Ohrid and Novi Sad. She has participated in many group exhibitions.

Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia