2016
A series of 8 photographs, each of dimensions: 100 x 70 cm; spatial installation of variable size
 
The work represents my insight and concurrently an answer to the refugee issue in which I have participated as a volunteer at a refugee centre bordering Croatia. Space in Between was an exactly determined space, restricted and fenced. White tents with a pronouncedly transitory connotation, in which we were folding up blankets, were becoming the »place« or the space of an artwork, in which our routine action – tidying up and putting away the blankets – became an element of communication between us and the migrants. The folded up blankets, awaiting new users, became social sculptures in the white cube-like spaces. They were temporary creations, daily changing their form by being carried, folded up, unfolded, and made into beds, and were a result of spontaneous activity. The objects that could also be called situations, with their individuality and temporality, undefined in their relation to the spatial and time circumstances, also think models of co-operation, various looks on the function of the public. At the border it proved to be a space in between, a liminal area, an almost non-place.

The non-place1 has been further underlined by language barriers. The words printed on white sheets of paper, randomly placed on the tent’s walls – with their ornamental abstractedness, illegibility, and »limitations« addressed me as bare images. Translated, they were warning about bellicosity of the police, the state and local community, therefore an institution. The language as a means of understanding or/and communication, therewith the overcoming of fear, I have – with a randomly chosen word – designed into a pattern and printed it onto the blankets2 from the refugee centre. The user, the spectator – by reading the social sculpture – is also, to a certain extent co-creating it, upgrading, constructing and breaking it up. In the inability to communicate by a language, we have – by constructing social sculptures – created patterns and new communities of inter-human and multi-cultural (co)habitation and nonverbal communication.

1 According / After Augé, a »non-place« defines also a place of fleeting acquaintances.

2 We had to dispose of the blankets that were too filthy to be re-folded and re-used, so I have taken them from the large litter bins, had them dry-cleaned and set them as a surface for printing.

Project was supported by Ministry of Culture RS.