THIS MACHINE BUILDS NATIONS
I visited Jasmina Cibic’s ‘This Machine Builds Nations’ exhibition at BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Arts in Gateshead. Cibic is a performance, installation and film artist from Slovenia. Her art is very political and explores culture and ideology in a soft yet powerful statement. The multi-media aspect of her exhibition provides a lot of different aspects to take in and keeps the viewer interested throughout. Immediately I felt Cibic had a created a specific atmosphere in her section of the gallery through her use of lighting, sound and layout. Initially, a grey painted mural greets you at the door. On either side stand metal sculptures cast with the words ‘Everything we do today will look heroic in the future’ and ‘An atmosphere of Joyful Contemplation’. The position of these sculptures make it difficult to read the message and you have to interact with it for a while to find the beginning of the sentence in its circular structure. There is also a pink light feature in the ceiling, which provides a soft cast of light over the grey aspects at the beginning of the exhibition. There are also screens showing performance art which can be sat and watched in a dark room. My favourite pieces in this exhibition were definitely the cast iron sculptures. I like the composition of them and the interaction aspect. I like that it is such a simple structure but provides many meanings and forces the viewer to think and piece together the sentence word by word. The juxtaposition of the solid metal in the structure which is almost industrial and the positivity of the phrases within it is brilliant and is almost like a glimmer of hope and light in something seemingly harsh, cold and rigid. I would highly recommend this exhibition and am looking forward to seeing more of Cibic’s work.
