Date: June 6 – 16, 2024, at multiple locations in Belgrade
The fourth Art Weekend Belgrade (AWB) opened last night with the exhibition “Questions of Belonging” and the spectacular performance GRADsky agent show #3, which captivated attendees with its musical-dance and visual expression at KC Grad and the Spanish House. This event, running until June 16, 2024, is organized by Cultural Front and KC Grad with the goal of supporting and promoting the local creative scene, as well as enabling Serbian artists to connect and collaborate with international artists and curators.
At the opening, the initiator and artistic director of Art Weekend Belgrade, Ljudmila Stratimirović, and Dr. Christoph Veldhues, director of the institute and department for cultural programs at Goethe-Institut Belgrade, addressed the audience.
This year’s central exhibition, titled “Questions of Belonging,” was inspired by Merle Radtke, the renowned director of Kunsthalle Munster and this year’s guest curator at AWB, reflecting on the issue of belonging in contemporary society. The exhibition is presented at four locations in downtown Belgrade, where artists ponder and respond to this particularly relevant theme today.
In addition to the main exhibition, visitors can participate in an adventurous treasure hunt, discovering “artistic treasures” at various locations across the city. Ljudmila Stratimirović, the initiator and artistic director of Art Weekend Belgrade, announced a rich program, realized in cooperation with museums, galleries, and independent cultural centers. The complete program can be viewed at the following link: AWB Program 2024
AWB 2024 will feature more than 30 artists at four interesting locations: KC Grad City Gallery, part of the Staklopan factory on Strahinjića Bana Street, the former Peking restaurant on Vuka Karadžića Street, and the underground passage near the Albania Palace. From June 6 to 16, visitors will enjoy the works of contemporary artists from Serbia, Austria, China, Great Britain, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The AWB program includes premieres of multimedia performances, as well as discussion sessions with domestic and international guest curators, artistic directors, artists, and critics, which will take place at various locations throughout the duration of AWB. Additionally, AWB gathers and maps a large number of participants such as museums, galleries, independent cultural centers, and art spaces that together contribute to the rich program of the event, as they will also offer their planned programs.
AWB 2024 is supported by EUNIC Serbia – National Institutes for Culture of the European Union in Serbia, Goethe-Institut, the Embassy of Portugal, the Italian Institute for Culture, the Embassy of Finland, Hungarikum Center, Czech Home, Austrian Cultural Forum, SBB, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, and Earth PR.
The guest curator for AWB 2024 is Merle Radtke, director of Kunsthalle Munster since 2018 where she creates and realizes exhibitions and public programs. She is also responsible for the large city collection of art in public spaces, which includes works by Claes Oldenburg, Rebecca Horn, Donald Judd, Silke Wagner, and many other significant artists. Before her tenure as director of Kunsthalle Munster, she worked as a curator for Hamburger Kunsthalle and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and as a curator and selector of art films. From 2015 to 2017, she was a research associate at the postgraduate program Aesthetics of the Virtual at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. In 2018, she was a fellow at the Villa Kamogava Goethe Institute in Japan. She regularly publishes texts on contemporary art and culture.
