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(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.)

Available at: https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/traces-of-disappearing-in-three-acts/ 

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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.

multimedia project (2 channel video 14’, 11 photographs, performance)

The 2-channel video installation East Side Story employs a specific media language to speak about a social problem of our time – the problem of violence and intolerance towards the other and different. The work juxtapose different media representations combining archival documentary footage from the violence on the streets of Zagreb and Belgrade during Gay Pride in 2001 and 2002 with live-action of a choreographed dance performance where language of movement mimics the violent actions taking place on locations where it really happened. In this way the artist achieves on one hand a dramatic effect and on the other a poetical reading of such an absurd brutality. “This was a way of suggesting the presence of a vivid, creative force very much alike the resistance movement that is trying to change the intolerant, conservative society into a better one” (I.G.)

Film

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.

Available at: https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/traces-of-disappearing-in-three-acts/ 

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multimedia project (2 photo serie, short film 17’ 30″)

Site specific/participative project was made in Kolubara (Serbia) during period 2004-2006. Project consist of 3 photo series and one film “Angels with Dirty Faces (turning point)”, 17.30 min,

Project in a poetic way present the miner’s protest in Kolubara as well as the civil protests in Belgrade that culminated in the burning of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia on 5 October 2000, led to the fall of Milosevic’s regime in Yugoslavia. The title of the work refers to the paradoxical situation in this region during the 1990’s: on one side there are hard-working and honest miners with clean hands and clear conscience who live on the verge of poverty, on the other side, dirty-handed politicians and the governing body who commit violence in their greed for power and dirty embezzlements, although they should stand as an example.

multimedia project (2 channel video 14’, 11 photographs, performance)

The 2-channel video installation East Side Story employs a specific media language to speak about a social problem of our time – the problem of violence and intolerance towards the other and different. The work juxtapose different media representations combining archival documentary footage from the violence on the streets of Zagreb and Belgrade during Gay Pride in 2001 and 2002 with live-action of a choreographed dance performance where language of movement mimics the violent actions taking place on locations where it really happened. In this way the artist achieves on one hand a dramatic effect and on the other a poetical reading of such an absurd brutality. “This was a way of suggesting the presence of a vivid, creative force very much alike the resistance movement that is trying to change the intolerant, conservative society into a better one” (I.G.)

photographic serie, 14 panels

On the occasion of Eleusis European Capital of Culture.

Curated by Katerina Gregos

The work is a tribute to the Eleusinian Workers Union, which used to be one of the biggest worker’s union in Greece. The serie is the result of a participatory action carried out by the artist during his residency in Elefsina and it traces through symbols and testimonies the personal experiences of 14 workers from different sectors of the territory united by the universal tool of gloves. The new photographic series Small Acts of Power focuses on the working-class history of Elefsina and the diverse labour force and human potential that makes up the city. During his research, the artist met workers in Elefsina’s industries and captured their stories photographically in their work environments. During these meetings with workers of different generations, both retired and active, the artist asked them to choose an object that was important to them during their productive lives. The photographs are portraits of each worker, even though they per se are actually absent. Instead, the artist focuses on their hands, with or without gloves – both archetypal symbols of manual labour. The result is a powerful statement about working-class identity.

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.

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Available in Croatian, with an English summary.

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