Untitled (an artist, a curator, a museum)

2020

video performance, 8’15’’

MSU Zagreb

The performance Untitled (an artist, a curator, a museum) was originally commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (MSU) during the online international conference Biennials of Contemporary Art – Experiences And Opportunities. The work takes inspiration from the conceptual artist Mladen Stilinović and his work An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist, created at the beginning of the 90s to criticize the domination of the Western art system, but nowadays in a global art world, Grubić shifts the attention from the power of language to the responsibilities of the artist and o art system toward the society in general.

On a black canvas lively assembled on the empty stage, the artist folds A4 papers with letters composing three different sentences just changing the subject:

An Artist who Cannot Live what s/he Preaches is not an Artist

A Curator who Cannot Live what s/he Preaches is not a Curator

A Museum which Cannot Live what it Preaches is not a Museum

Faithful to his principle according to which the artists, and moreover the other players of the art system who work in the public sphere, cannot separate daily life from their roles and therefore must have a responsibility toward society, with this slightly dramatic conclusion Grubic symbolically referrers to the fragility of the entire system of art, as well as to the fragility of ourselves if we do not maintain a balance among solidarity, responsibility, and ethical principles in our daily behavior.