Zoran Naskovski: Public Secrets

The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade
October 19, 2023–February 26, 2024 

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina 
January 26, 2024–March 17, 2024

The retrospective exhibition PUBLIC SECRETS, organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina in Novi Sad, presents the work of the artist Zoran Naskovski encompassing a few decades. Naskovski is one of the most important representatives of the independent art scene of the 1990s and one of the most prominent Serbian artists, who has continually been active for more than three decades in the field of contemporary art. Following a succession of influential works such as Death in Dallas, L’Origine du monde, War Frames and others, which attracted attention internationally, and expert analyses of his work, this exhibition is the first retrospective of Naskovski’s artworks and artistic engagement in the context of contemporary social issues, institutional critique and activism, specific artistic explorations and methodologies, as well as innovations in the field of video art, installations, performance and media-related art practices. Through his works based on the transformation of media, Naskovski examines controversial social processes that imply political and economic oppression, media manipulation of images and information, as well as negation of the critical potential and ethical functions of public institutions. From the early 1990s Naskovski’s art practice has been marked by his engaged attitude towards current social issues, as well as the actual medium and language of art. The Internet project War Frames, which uses TV programming as ready-made images in extraordinary circumstances and shifts it to the realm of the Internet, was presented within the framework of the central exhibition of the 52nd Venice Biennale. His seminal work, the video installation Death in Dallas, exhibited at numerous international exhibitions, constitutes an example of radical editing characterised by discoded relations of audio-visual elements, as well as a forceful juxtaposition of image and sound. The long-term project Mandala and Cross represents an open platform for questioning the politics of images and the installation Crisis / Ornette Coleman in Belgrade, based on research into documents, artefacts, projections, video recordings and raw material, deals with the issue of racism and the new crisis of conservatism. The media ontology of his art practice, in historical terms, relates to the experimentality of the avant-garde and conceptual art whose media scope ranges from painting, video, film, installation, performance, photography, sound to digital art practices and artificial intelligence (the project Question).

The works of Zoran Naskovski were presented within the framework of the key exhibitions and art events in the 1990s including the exhibition After the Wall. Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe and later within the framework of international exhibitions of the museums and institutions: the Whitney Museum in New York, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, the Tate Museum in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Fridericianum Museum in Kassel, Transmediale Berlin, Kunsthale Vien in Viena, the MACRO Museum in Rome, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest etc. Naskovski participated in the central exhibition of the 52nd Venice Biennale, Think with the Senses—Feel with the Mind. Art in the present Tense, selected by the curator Robert Storr in 2007. 

Curators: Gordana Nikolić, Una Popović

Exhibition production: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade / ​The Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad.

Patrons: The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, The Provincial Secretariat for Culture, Public Information and Relations with the Religious Communities of Vojvodina.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade
Ušće 10, Blok 15, Novi Beograd, Serbia

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina
Dunavska 37, Novi Sad, Serbia