Art installation Richard III - RECOGNITION
Art installation Richard III - RECOGNITION was envisioned and designed as an intervention on the building facade of the Palace of Serbia (when erected in 1959, Palace of the Federation of Yugoslavia). The inspiration and motifs for the work were found in Shakespeare's drama King Richard III: the merciless power struggle and cruel authority of Richard III represent the direct link and association to the space chosen, as it contained and still contains traces of the turbulent and contested political powers of the past, present, and future. The building represented the symbol of the government's strength and stability in the early 1960s of the XX century which, with the dissolution of the communities/territories of Yugoslavia, lost its meaning and significance in relation to the purpose for which it was originally planned.
The installation, located on the building facade oriented toward Mihailo Pupin Boulevard, consists of two interventions: 1) the white stone facade was covered with matte black foils, and 2) the long horizontal rows of windows were covered with semi-transparent foils with photographs of faces/portraits of different people printed on them. Visually, the images took the form similar to Serbian versions of obituaries. The photographs of human faces, equally men and women of different ages, are taken frontally - enface. They are blurred and obscured, some almost to the point of unrecognizability. At the same time, they represent real people, members of the nation who erected the state and the building, and lived by the acts of the government which resided in the building spaces.
The black/white (non)colors of the frontal facade represent metaphors of good/bad. The installation brought these two opposites together through continual cyclical shifts of night/day and different installation versions during different parts of the day. During the day, the visitors' attention is drawn by the obvious facade color change (from white to black). During the night, a specifically designed light installation was utilized to enlighten the horizontal row of windows from the inside, and as such, the semi-transparent portraits, making them alive. Together with the music, whose rhythm is following the light changes, the portraits of people become active and dynamic, representing the nightmares of Richard III, revoking the faces of all the victims fallen to his regime. By the continuous repetition of different elements of the installation, starting with the architectural elements to coordinated light and music movements, we wanted to emphasize the tendency of history repetition on Balkan territory.
Final report (Serbian language only) here >