(selection from 33 works)

The project ‘366 Liberation Rituals’ consist of lots of minimalistic micro-political interventions in public space realized by the artist on everyday basis actions during whole 2008 and partly 2009. The starting point for 366 liberation rituals is the 40th anniversary of 1968, but it refers also to the heritage of conceptual art practices of ex-YU region – in which, for example, the Group of Six Artists played a significant role – and to Jean Luc Godard political movies and conceptual strategies from late 60ties, early 70.

Every day over the course of one year, Grubić performed a series of rituals, micropolitical actions and interventions, marking the 40th anniversary of the revolutionary 1968. The work documented a combination of illegal actions, the immediacy of the encounters with the street, performativity, civil disobedience and poetic terrorism, producing tensions in the inert public field. With these “rituals”, the artist initiated a series of social corrections aimed at the irregularities in Croatia’s post-transition society. In some of the works, the color red serves as both a symbol and a recurring motif. It appears in various forms, from a red star adorning discarded Christmas trees to a red flag fluttering in his hand as he cycles by, or as the pioneers’ scarves on the busts of national heroes of the National Liberation War. Some ideas and methods explored in the 366 Rituals of Liberation, such as Small Citation Lessons, move from one piece to another, continue to live and grow, becoming the basis for some of Grubić’s future works and actions.

action

Action carried out by the artist painting a black circle in the public court in front Diocletian’s Palace, Split. Timed to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of an earlier action by the ‘Red Peristyle’ group (1968), this was a place to reactive a space of political enquiry and debate employing the visual language of Suprematism, but also proposing the black spot as a metaphor for ”a stain on the soul of each passive individual who should have actively contributed to the improvement of everyday life (I.G.)”.

Through the guerilla actions and statements in media, the work developed as political provocation. It was suggested that there existed subversive group ‘Black Peristyle’, which caused polemics, as well as a call from the Department for War Crimes and Terrorism. The Court decided to charge Grubic a fine for public property damage. This provoked media reactions, in which intellectuals and artists defended the right to criticize and protest as an important component of contemporary art practice. For Grubic was important to provoke the state institutions by suggesting the existence of a resistance movement in Croatia at that time. The charge has been withdrawn.

Link to national TV report:

multimedia interventions in public space

The project is the result of a residency period the artist spent in Modica in Sicily (Italy), and it is realized in cooperation with the Muslim community of Modica during “I Vespri.Civic Forum In Five Acts” curated by Marco Scotini

The aim of the work “Missing architecture” is to light on the fact that, despite the presence in town of a big Muslim community, any classic mosque has been erected so far. For that reason, members of the Muslim community rent houses or apartments that become a meeting-place for the prayer. Citizens pointed out that the construction of mosques was forbidden during Berlusconi’s rightist coalition rule. Their dream is to have the classical mosque with a minaret built one day.

The artists inserted in the public space the elements, which symbolically represent the missing place of worship for Muslims using three elements that represent foundations, walls and a minaret of a possible mosque. “I place several carpets on the square areas, I attach posters with oriental mosaic on the walls of the old city, and for the first time on Sicily, muezzin recites, on my invitation, the ezan-call to prayer in the public space on different locations” (I.G.)

50 public interventions (selection)

“Another Green World” is an exhibition organized by Fondazione Morra and curated by Adriana Rispoli in the public space in the most central historical garden in the town of Naples, Villa Comunale. It consisted of 50 interventions on palm trees, statuary and neoclassical architectures and a performance dedicated to Dante poet. It was an event of political-poetic nature typical of the Croatian artist’s practice, a form of participatory activism that aims to involve civil society using the garden as a single monumental display in which to express different forms of emergency that have become even more urgent with the pandemic: the need for a return to nature, community life, solidarity, responsibility.

Multidisciplinary project (5 posters, photography, short film)

Do Animals…? (2017) is a multimedia project based on the artist’s research on former slaughterhouses in northern Italy during his time in the RAVE East Village Artist Residency program. As a staunch supporter of animal rights and moreover as an activist, Grubic investigates the psychological effect these factories of death have on human consciousness. The work is composed of a series of five posters that feature photographs of now empty former slaughterhouses, overwritten with the artist’s questions, that appear in the city center in the form of anonymous ads. Silent and cold, but at the same time distinctly disturbing, the images are visually conceived as the path an animal takes from life to death, from light to darkness. Like a surreal call to public moral responsibility, through his work the artist introduces the general public to his examination of humankind’s conflicted feelings towards animals, taking full advantage of commercial mainstream media – urban billboards. This compelling urban intervention has already been shown in seven Italian cities (including Turin, Trieste, Udine and Matera). The ‘Do Animals…?’ project is also accompanied by a film shot inside these former slaughterhouses at night, together with interviews with former slaughterhouse employees.

Hotel Vladimir, Ustí nad Labem, Czech Republic

Mir (Peace) is a public intervention in which Grubić modified the neon sign atop the Hotel Vladimir in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. Built in the 1980s as a tribute to the friendship between the twin cities of Ústí nad Labem and Vladimir in Russia (then part of the Soviet Union), the hotel originally displayed the full city name. Grubić altered the sign to light up only the last three letters of Vladimir, forming Mir—meaning Peace in many Slavic languages. Positioned in the city center, the sign was visible to passersby at night from various angles. This subtle intervention transformed the original political symbol into a message of peace, which Grubić considers a “precondition for well-being, common prosperity, and solidarity in economically and socially troubled times.” Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ústí nad Labem became home to many Ukrainian refugees, some of whom stayed at the Hotel Vladimir, further shaping its symbolic meaning.

public interventions 

Whatever could be the chosen medium or the modality of intervention up to including the personal style of life, Igor Grubic consistently applies a political vision to his way of living and therefore to make art. Smash the Myth is in some way a tautology with which Grubic declares, paraphrasing the radical ideology of the Russian poet of the revolution Vladimir Mayakovsky, that the NON-POLITICAL art does not exist because any artistic expression, or even a simple thought, can only be a political gesture and must reflect the responsibility that artist has toward society.

The Smash the Myth series consists of micro-interventions in urban spaces where Grubic, in a temporary and sometimes illegal way, affixes a banner to iconic places in various cities. Started in the mid-90s with the project Micro-museum of Revolutionary Heritage, the series has touched several cities such as Berlin at the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park and Dresden in front of the Academy of Fine Arts, and in Naples in the mythical Olivetti factory. Founded in 1955 on a project by the rationalist architect Luigi Cosenza, the former Olivetti Factory is a symbol of the humanistic vision of an enlightened industrialist whose business mission was directly linked to the well-being of its workers. With a socialist setting ante litteram for Italy, Adriano Olivetti, in Pozzuoli as in the other Italian locations of his factories, had wanted for his employees a place in symbiosis with nature and equipped with all the necessary services deeply convinced that work is a social redemption tool. Within this small eden for workers, Grubic has chosen to affix his “motto” on what had once been the library place par excellence for the enrichment of the spirit.

2012

photography installation

The monument on Petrova Gora was designed by artist Vojin Bakić as part of a larger memorial complex dedicated to the memory of partisan and civilian victims. It was completed in 1981 after a decade of construction. Since the war in 1991, it has suffered from decades of systematic neglect and vandalism, with its valuable stainless steel panels still being stripped away to this day.

In 2012, on the Day of the Antifascist Struggle, artist Igor Grubić installed a black-and-white photograph measuring 5 × 6 meters on scaffolding near the monument, depicting its original state. The image emphasizes the stark contrast between the monument’s former appearance and the current reality of ongoing decay. To this day, the monument has not been restored.

About 30 contemporary artists from different generations took part in the project.

Performances were held in the city centre and installations were put in the streets, sqares, bookshops and libraries. Some works were printed in the magazines and daily press, some were put on the net. A popular independent radio station was used, video and film were shown in multimedia centre. Leaflets were handed out all around the Zagreb.

Protest caused writers and publishers reaction and a lot of discussions in the media. They spoke in support of the action. As Kora Girin writes “The artistic success of this endeavor lay in its activist achievement and the realization of the desired goal: the abolition of the new book tax rate within a year.” [1]

Leaflet text:

“A protest obtruded itself as a logical consequence of the society state. Impending 21^st century, the utmost devalorization of a book is absurd. Although the artistic circles suffer most by earning less and using a book the most, the problem takes hold of the whole society. Actually, what else to expect from the society lacking the possibility of cultural development and education, but to be something like silent intoxicated mass prone to change at anybody’s liking. And who is Anybody? And why he tends to hold down the development of freedom of thought and speech? The answers to these questions tamper the very core of human rights. Therefore this protest reassesses man’s fate in the society which refers to a book with such an ignorance.“ [2]

Igor Grubic

artists:

Ante Kuštre, Tomislav Gotovac, Filip Biffel, Zoran Pavelić, Schrmtz Teatar, Igor Rončević, Sandro Đukić, Ivan Kožarić, Goran Trbuljak, Vlado Martek, Milomir Repac, Iva Matija Bitanga, Duje Jurić, Mladen Stilinović, Leo Vukelić, Antun Maračić, Kata Mijatović, Bojan Gagić, Sanja Iveković, Kristina Leko, Zlatko Kopljar, Blaženko Kerešin, Andreja Kulunčić, Ivana Keser, Igor Grubić, Anonimni

Zagreb, 1998.

[1] Kora Girin, Is There Activism Without Compassion? in Igor Grubić: Gestures of Activation – Works in Public Space, 2024., p. 126.

[2] Igor Grubić, Knjiga i društvo 22%, 1998., p. 5., available in Croatian language at https://igorgrubic.org/ig/the-book-and-society-knjiga-i-drustvo/

Link to national TV report:

photography, action in public space

On the occasion of the Anti-fascist Resistance Day on June 22, I performed an action to repair a damaged anti-fascist plaque in Zagreb. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that most of the demolished anti-fascist monuments had never been restored. To this day, no one has been held accountable for more than 3,000 damaged, demolished, or removed anti-fascist monuments, and the current political leadership has not taken a clear stance towards anti-fascist heritage and has no strategy for reconstruction. With this action, I wanted to warn the public about the need for systematic care for our monumental heritage and stress the importance of affirming humanistic ideas of anti-fascism. This act of fixing the paper plaque onto the damaged plaque inspired the residents of the building in Primorska ulica in Zagreb to actually replace the broken plaque later.

As part of the A New Beginning exhibition organized by the Zagreb-based association “Attack!”, Igor Grubić created and distributed a leaflet at the Zagreb Student Center (SC) calling for the removal of its management. The action marked the culmination of widespread discontent with the cultural policies of the SC in the 1990s.

During socialism in Yugoslavia, the Student Center was established as a state institution dedicated to engaging with young artists and cultural practitioners. It served as a platform for avant-garde experimentation, introducing new media technologies, fostering self-organization, and facilitating new forms of political engagement. By the 1970s and 1980s, it had become a hub of alternative and urban culture, renowned for its openness to artistic experimentation.

However, in the 1990s, under the conservative, right-oriented government, the SC’s management became closely aligned with the ruling party. Support for alternative cultural programs was withdrawn in favor of traditional and folkloric events designed to ignite nationalistic sentiment. Cultural policies for young people were dictated by government appointees, whose priorities reflected their own beliefs rather than the needs of the younger generation. As a result, many student cultural initiatives were rejected, and important magazines like Gordogan and Godine were shut down.

Grubić’s leaflet was both a work of art and a call to action. It not only called for removing the SC’s management but also became a rallying point for student mobilization. The leaflet provoked an immediate reaction: at the exhibition’s opening, members of the SC management were visibly agitated, and by the following morning, the leaflet had been removed from the gallery. This act of censorship fueled further outrage and sparked media attention.

Grubić actively participated in organizing student forums to address the SC’s cultural stagnation and propose ways forward. These discussions extended into public discourse and eventually led to the formation of the “Student Initiatives Movement,” which launched a petition demanding the removal of the SC’s management. The petition cited the censorship of Grubić’s work as one of its key arguments. Over nine months, the petition gathered 5,000 student signatures, while a state audit revealed numerous irregularities in the SC’s operations, finally leading to the removal of the SC director from his position.

Since this turning point, the SC has re-established its role as a space where students can create and manage their cultural programs, restoring its legacy as a vibrant center of youth-driven culture and experimentation.