Mentor Information



ANDELIC-GALIC GORDANA

Location: Sarajevo, Bosnia&Herzegovina
Genres:Performance.
Languages: English, German.

E-mail:gandelic[at]gmail.com
Website: www.scca.ba/artistfiles/gordana

Bio:For the past fifteen years my artistic work, besides installation and objects, have included also other media such as:
video installation, performance, photoprint, video. After the breakout of the war in former Yugoslavia I suddenly turned
away from classic painting and traditional techniques towards new media. This happened so suddenly that I was not
aware of the transition I made at that moment. The first piece “The Whole City-Graveyard” was not as much a result
of conscious thought as it was a work of instinct and reflex. Accordingly, this change was neither planned nor
preceded by a gradual transition period. The change happened abruptly and at the same speed that my life was being
changed at the time. Cramped in a space I did not choose to be in (refuge,), pressurised by torrents of dissimilar
news and interpretations of the same events, restrained by inability to perform and change circumstances,
I searched for holes in the wall for a possible way out. Within the general stiffness I needed space, fresh air,
light…I felt the urge to break out and scream. So…in Munich 1993 I stepped in front of the parliament building and
started a three-day performance in which I created graves of people who were killed in these days in their flats
or in the streets of Sarajevo and were denied the possibility of being given an appropriate homage.
After the end of the war in 1996 I returned to Sarajevo and made the piece “KUNST MACHT FREI”,
a cynical verbal construction was brought forward from an equally cynical construction “Arbeit macht frei” which “adorned”
entrances of concentration (and alleged work) camps, namely mass execution grounds of cosmic proportions.
With this piece I indicated, locally and globally, the double-faced manner in which society treats art and artists.
Artists became propaganda tools used to spread and develop ideological principles of nationalistic authorities,
all with the excuse of patriotism and allegiance to their homeland. Those who refused to follow these principles
are ruthlessly rejected and isolated. The piece incited polar responses which is something I expected and hoped
for because anything is better than being lulled into a forcefully established peace. It was difficult to watch the
results of the devastation of war from this kind of peace, to observe the ruins of thoroughly familiar buildings
as well as ravaged people and nature, and not being able to act upon it. I began a performance piece “Wrongly Healed”,
which stretched over a period of few months, by invading one such object/building in Sarajevo with the intention to
convalesce, heal and cleanse it from every evil through art. I made the decision to preserve everything found in it and
to reorganise it, give it another form and new values. After a period of 4-5 months, when the building ceased to
represent a ruin but a place in which art is being created, I opened it to the public. At first the enlivened space
itself then subsequently the art pieces produced in it. As the name of the exhibition/performance suggests,
perhaps I succeeded in healing the wound but not in erasing the scars.
Today just like in those times, my everyday routine, my surroundings, mental and emotional space in which I live
and which exceeds the borders of my country, but also encompasses it, are something from what I take and build my
image of the world. Nowadays when these principles are mutating not only within eastern Europe but globally
and in the entire world, as such they inevitably have become of great interest to artists as well as myself included
and unavoidably thematically permeate my work.
I try to escape barren aestheticism in my work, and I want to follow the principles of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus:
"The man's individuality represents the source of all moral values and consciousness on that is the road towards
a uthentic existence. Sincerity, spontaneity and creativity are absolute priorities, and inner conviction becomes the
real starting force..." Critics usually qualify my works as engaged art but for me they are above all portraits and
self portraits because, no matter which material or medium I use, I engage solely with day to day portrayal
of myself and others in a certain context which later on becomes the background of my “painting”.
Depending on how successful I am in truthfully and convincingly projecting my feelings, thoughts, messages
and to what extent my self portrait has become a portrait in which others can recognise themselves and be
influenced by, the work is good, bad, intimate or engaging.