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23/9/2014

Dubravka Vidovic

Anne Cecile Noique Art, Shanghai

Anne Cecile Noique Art is proud to present Once Upon A Time, a solo show by Dubravka Vidović.

Dubravka Vidović expresses herself through photography, installation and video. Her artistic reflection is based on her life experience of growing up in wartime Croatia, in Italy where she moved to study Fine Arts and in Shanghai where she has lived for the past four years. In each place, Dubravka has collected elements and objects which over time have become interconnected, overlapping memories which often challenge the notions of "permanence" and "temporary" all in a search of a way to keep the memory of a lost urban reality.

Coming from a coastal town, Dubravka sees water as a main feature in her inner landscape, as an essential part of her memory for she "sailed" away from her native place nearly 20 years ago. In her series "Waves", Dubravka works with found existing models, old photographs of Chinese junks taken in Shanghai on the Huangpu River or the Suzhou Creek. Printed on silk then mounted on paper like traditional Chinese scrolls, intentional wrinkling in the mounting creates a series of waves. This minimal act of poetry is enough to bring motion to the picture, to put new life into it, as if a breath of life, able to connect past and present supporting the artwork. Through a procedure of re-contextualization the author manipulates time, beckons to the past, “appropriates forms and characters”, assigning them new meanings.

The photographic series “Shikumen’s Walls” started in 2010 is the record of a performance and the documentation left of a temporary installation: the urban intervention – almost situationist – consists in the insertion of old books in the interstices of the exterior walls’ bricks of the so-called Shikumen houses, symbols of the disappeared (and disappearing) old Shanghai. These shikumen houses were part of the cultural heritage even with their visible decrepit aspects but were bound for destruction, sacrificed by men for the sake of urban and economic development. Her poetic approach to this urban past is evident in all her photographs. The crumbling stone walls appear like "fragile and romantic remnants of the past". The installations among the rumbles are made with books filling a broken window or cracked walls covered with scratched paper or paint. These elements enable the image to tell a story, to address and to evoke the previous inhabitants and the events of their lives. The old books piled up next to the walls, suggesting that a city is nothing but a text being constantly re-written. Walls, external and exposed, are impersonal architectural elements that divide and separate, yet time charge them with an affective quality only years can give to objects.

Born in Zadar (Croatia) in 1970, Dubravka Vidović lives and works in Shanghai and Milan. She graduated in painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan with Luciano Fabro. In 1999 she was admitted to the Advanced Course in Visual Arts at Foundation Ratti in Como with Haim Steinbach. Vidović works in the fields of photography, installation, video and assemblages. Among group exhibitions, Dubravka Vidović has exhibited in Final project with Haim Steinbach, Ex-chiesa di San Francesco, Como (1999); Tracce di un seminario, Via Farini, curated by Angela Vettese and Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Milano (2000); Mercedes Benz Art Prize, curated by Ulrich Scheider, Documenta Halle, Kassel / Museum Ludwig, Aachen (2001); Note: nostalgie, Via Farini, curated by Gabi Scardi, Milano (2002); Insert, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, curated by Tihomir Milovac, Branko Franceschi, Silva Kalčić and Antonia Majača, Zagreb (2005); Masaï Art Factory 2005, Assab one, curated by Roberto Pinto and Gabi Scardi, Milano (2005); 11th Zadar Salon of young artists (first prize), Art Gallery of the National Museum Zadar (2005); European Photography Festival, Museo Frati Cappuccini, curated by Gigliola Foschi, Reggio Emilia (2010); Hotspot Berlin, Georg-Kolbe Museum, curated by Eugen Blume, Berlin (2011); Memoria variabile, Gallery Milan, curated by Carla Pellegrini and Gigliola Foschi, Milan (2011); Re-calling the past, 52. Annale, Istarska sabornica, curated by Radmila Iva Janković, Poreč (2012); Imageination, ULUPUH, curated by Silva Kalčić, Zagreb (2013);

T-HT Award, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, curated by Vladimir Čajkovac, Zagreb (2013). Among solo show, Vidović has exhibited in Formae Mentis, Art Gallery of the National Museum, Zadar (2006); Boxed Sea, Artopia, curated by Francesca Pasini, Milano (2007); Exil, Podbielski Contemporary, curated by Gigliola Foschi, Berlino (2011); Exil, Alberto Peola, Torino (2012); Monte Verità, Podbielski Contemporary, Berlino (2013).

This year in Shanghai, she was invited to show part of her series Exile in OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal Shanghai (curated by Mariagrazia Costantino) and during the festival Art in the City (curated by Davide Quadrio e Massimo Torrigiani) in K11 Art Mall, with ArtCN.

Opening 24 september 6pm

Anne Cecile Noique Art
Guangfu Road (near Suzhou Creek), 423 Shanghai
admission free

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