Art Weekend Belgrade

Art Weekend Belgrade is a manifestation initiated by KC Grad with an aim of promoting and developing the local contemporary art scene, to present local artist’s works to the wider audience, as well as to enable meeting and collaboration with foreign curators.

Art Weekend Belgrade – AWB / June 6th – 9th, 2024

www.awb.rs

Belgrade Art Weekend – BAW / Belgrade Art Weekend is an event initiated in 2019 by the Cultural Front and KC Grad with the aim of supporting the development of the local creative scene and providing better visibility for artists, as well as contacts with a broader audience, international artists, and curators. Collaboration between artistic scenes, finding new ways of visibility, knowledge exchange, and experiences is very important for the professional development of artists and cultural workers. BAW gathers and maps a large number of participants such as museums, galleries, independent cultural centers, and artistic spaces that contribute together to the rich event program.

Art Weekend Belgrade consists of several programs:

Exhibitions proposed and participated in by museums, galleries, international cultural centers, artistic spaces, independent cultural centers in the official program.
Exhibition at KC Grad, specially designed and realized in collaboration with guest curators from abroad, including a large number of local artists.
Conference bringing together local representatives of the contemporary art scene and international curators, critics, journalists. …..
Locations of this year’s exhibitions produced by KC Grad in collaboration with guest curators:

Grads Gallery at KC Grad, surroundings of KC Grad, part of the building of the former glass factory in Strahinjića Bana Street, underground passage near the Albania Palace… …..

Program produced by KC Grad

June, opening of BAW, KC Grad and surroundings
June, opening of the exhibition at the glass factory
June, discussion program / opening of the exhibition in the underground passage
June, program at other locations to be announced …..
Guest Curator for AWB 2024

Merle Radtke, curator, director of Kunsthalle Munster

Merle Radtke has been the director of Kunsthalle Munster since 2018. She creates and implements exhibitions and public programs. She has collaborated with artists such as Mary Beth Edelson, Christiane Blattmann, Katia Kameli, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Mikolaj Sobczak, Pedro Barateiro, and Dominique White. Merle also runs the residency program for curators and artists NRV +. She is responsible for the large collection of public art in the city, which includes works by Claes Oldenburg, Rebecca Horn, Donald Judd, Silke Wagner, and many other significant artists. Before becoming the director of Kunsthalle Munster, she worked as a curator for the Hamburger Kunsthalle and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, as well as a curator and selector of art films. From 2015 to 2017, she was a research associate in the postgraduate program Virtual Aesthetics at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. In 2018, she was a fellow at the Villa Kamogawa Goethe Institute in Japan. She regularly publishes articles on contemporary art and culture. ….. Merle Radtke’s Concept Proposal for BAW 2024

Questions of Belonging – Belgrade Art Weekend 2024

Where do I belong? A question that can be asked for various reasons and often doesn’t have a straightforward answer. It can relate to a state of in-betweenness, a sense of loss, a condition of belonging everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. It’s a deeply personal question that simultaneously considers larger social contexts. The main exhibition of this year’s Belgrade Art Weekend (BAW) plays with the fundamental means of orientation and disorientation. It addresses the question of belonging and non-belonging at a time when the world seems to be increasingly off-kilter, marked by a lack of orientation and helplessness, with discontent and detachment widespread.

The exhibition aims to focus on how we can change the way we relate to each other and to the world around us, posing several questions: Where does our sense of belonging come from – whether it’s to a place or a community? What stories do we share? What is our heritage? What provides us with stability? What can function as an anchor? What role do history, heritage, tradition, and collective memory play? How does the past inscribe itself into the present and future? What enables us to break free from roles that seem fixed? What does it mean to be part of a social community? Given or chosen? What makes us family, what kind of companions? What constitutes a community? What does the concept of home mean? What if the sense of belonging is fraught with contradictions? And how does belonging relate to contemporary questions of identity?

Belonging, and its opposite, alienation, shape our identity, our relationships, the society around us, the world at large. Sometimes, that sense is defined by longing, whether for the past or for a place left behind. Everything from language and nationality to the state apparatus itself can be used as a means to political ends; to either foster or undermine our collective sense of togetherness.

The exhibition poses questions of polarization that sustain racial, religious, and class divisions (extractive capitalism). Therefore, forms of disintegration play an increasingly important role as a form of resilience. The exhibition uses resilience to respond to the current state of perpetual crisis, reviving and celebrating plural narratives outside normative dominance. What can we learn by sharing different positions, different perspectives? And how can the diversity of existences and their ways of life establish and maintain connections with each other, and what symbiotic relationships can emerge from it? Ultimately, there is nothing that is defined, but a multitude of stories inviting exploration.

The works in the exhibition can serve as instruments of self-assurance, allowing us to question our position in the world. They allow us to stay in touch with our humanity while providing space for vulnerability, imagination, and dreams. Art here serves as an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of affectivity, to reflect on the past and present, to put forth ideas for the future so that we can together shape a new paradigm of life as we desire.