Aleksandra Domanović: Hotel Marina Lućica

After three successful exhibitions by Harun Farocki in 2012, the artists’ collective Slavs and Tartars in 2013 and Nevin Aladag last year, this summer the Art Space Pythagorion presents a solo exhibition of the artist Aleksandra Domanović titled Hotel Marina Lučica.

Personal and public histories of- ten meld in the work of Aleksandra Do- manović (b. 1981, Novi Sad). Question- ing the idea of an inflexible, concrete historical timeline, the artist herself be- comes the impetus and the vehicle for the historical inquiry that guides her practice. Her works in sculpture, video, photography and installation engage with the often unmentioned or unreal- ized politics which shape contemporary society.
Hotel Marina Lučica collects artworks made over the past five years, including a number of new commis- sions, which examine the lead-up to and repercussions of the dissolution of former Yugoslavia – where Domanović was born and grew up. The exhibition takes its title from a former resort locat- ed on the Croatian coast. The „Hotel Marina Lučica” is remembered and re- deployed by Domanović, who spent a summer there with her family just before the outbreak of civil war. By 1992, less than two years later, the resort had been repurposed as a recruitment center for Croatian soldiers, and later used as ref- ugee housing throughout the Yugoslav Wars. Since the late 1990s the hotel has sat vacant, gathering graffiti.

Just inside gallery’s entrance are a number of digitally rendered portraits of Josip Broz Tito – the former autocratic leader of Yugoslavia. Portraits of Tito were hung in most public buildings – governmental offices, schools and also
hotels. In Portrait (Bump Map),  Portrait (Kilim), and Portrait (Messing),  the masculine person- ification of nation-building, and the watchful guardian of its citizens, has been ‘feminized’. Tito’s features have been softened and combined with the artist’s memory of her childhood school teacher. A portrait of Tito would have likely hung above the receptionist’s desk at the Hotel Marina Lučica.
Here the Hotel Marina Lučica and Art Space Pythagorian – also a former beachside resort – are mapped onto each other, creating an environ- ment that blurs the sites of exhibiting art with sites of hospitality. Hotels and mu- seums share the common promise of affording their visitors new, sometimes profound, experiences. Acting as cultur- al ambassadors, the two entities in- creasingly benefit in tandem from globe- trotting artists and audiences, who exhibit in and patronize exhibitions the world over.