New Europe and the Balkans
17 January – 14 March; Stills

Nothing stays still at Stills anymore. The gallery’s latest exhibition, New Europe and the Balkans, feels alive – one week Zarevac’s wailing video art dominates the gallery space, and the next it’s Nikolic’s dance track. Downstairs there is an ever-changing programme of Balkan video art, tempting you back for more.

Even the photographic prints – which make up the vast majority of the show – are dynamic, deep in dialogue with each other about modern Balkan life. The seven contemporary artists from Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia grapple with their new identities, throwing off cultural stereotypes with a wry humour which should find a friendly audience in Scotland.

Dragana Zarevac’s video features a woman chanting wordlessly to a deep droning sound, an intensely authentic piece of Balkan heritage, you think. Until, that is, the camera pulls out: revealing her male companion hoovering their modern living-room in synch with the singing.

Mladen Stilinovic takes issue with the Balkan’s reputation for death and suffering, documenting in seven black and white photographs the ritual burial of three old matresses bearing the word ‘bol’ (pain). Opposite, Igor Grubic shows himself and his girlfriend dressed in modern bath towels, cycling shorts and sandals as quasi-Biblical refugees, addressing notions of historical identity from an uncompromisingly modern perspective.

The captions are a little too eager to offer interpretation, but their most loaded contribution is in the factual information at the top: Martek is “born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia/ Lives in Zagreb, Croatia” while others are “born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia/ Lives in Belgrade, Serbia”.

This fracturing of identity coupled with globalisation, not to mention the implications of European enlargement, create a range of cultural questions which seem to bother us, as an outside audience, more than it bothers the artists, who already know who they are. Though at times rehearsing existing artistic formulae, the artists assert their modernity with a fresh wit and direct appeal which cannot fail to capture our attention.

Catrìona Black, a-n magazine, April 2004