Iceland

Photographs by Ljiljana Maletin Vojvodić

This performance, realized during a research project in Iceland, examines the phenomena of memory, personal and collective identity, and the shifting contexts of social values through the process of artistic nomadism. When he was in this sublime landscape, Vojvodić sought to critically observe himself through the process of self-isolation and alienation, both in relation to the environment he came to and the environment in which he found himself.

Here, Vojvodić questions the notion of belonging – as an exiled artist, a stateless person, a migrant, a cosmopolitan – and creates his own flag, the artist's flag. After the disintegration of his homeland, Former Yugoslavia (SFRY), and the change of the political paradigm, the symbol of the five-pointed star became a taboo, a silenced pejorative. Following Russian artist Kazimir Malevich's contextualization of black as pure energy, Vojvodić creates a black flag with a black five-pointed star that represents art, the artist's credo and being, as well as his path and position of non-belonging.