Interview in Slobodna Dalmacija - "Tito's Pioneers are making sure the 'Rusevine' (ruins) won't be forgotten"
The Croatian-Dutch Artist Masha Matijevic investigates historically uncomfortable topics of here two homelands.
Often we remember things we would like to forget, and we forget the things which we would like to remember. That our memory is fragile, unstable and prone to the influence of time that passes and making us vulnerable by romanticising history and people; as the queen of the detective novels Agatha Christie knew so well. She wrote: "People are not how we remember them. As the years pass, they become more and more how we want them to be and the way we think we remember them."
A young artist from the Netherlands Masha Matijevic, reached a similar understanding as a little girl when she started asking questions about her grandfather, the impressions about the relativity of memory, which she acquired, became a underlying theme in her artistic work. - for some reason nobody spoke about my deceased grandfather in our family, as I had never met him I started asking questions about him. I was surprised by the fact that members of the same family had completely different impressions and memories of this man. Later when I studied my bachelor Fine Art in Arnhem and later on my Master's degree in photography in Breda, I had to explore this fascination, and I got interested in the problems which occur in memory and history. This led me to the personality Comrade Tito, who was one of the central figures in my childhood. Specifically, in the late 80s when I went to the Yugoslav school in Rotterdam, where I was admitted to the Pioneers. On that day, which I believed was of great importance, I hoped that I would finally meet him, not knowing that he already had passed away in 1980. In any case, the school was closed at the beginning of the Civil War, people told me my nationality had changed from Yugoslavian to Croatian, and Tito disappeared from our lives. I was nine years old and I had no idea what it all meant, I just knew that my old passport wasn’t valid anymore - said Masha, who is searching and questioning identity and trying to respond to the problems of our collective memory.
In 2008 she began to collect material for her art installation "Spoken Silence - Reminiscing Tito" believing that it is important to preserve memories of ordinary people besides the historical facts recorded in history books. - You need to follow both lines; one scientifically based on facts and the other which is based on the subjective experience of historical concepts in order not to be monotone. When (these) people explain their feelings about something or someone from the past, it creates the opportunity to enter the subject - said Masha.
She depicts this by building installations, which include numerous works and varied materials such as, for example, found footage of the recordings of the soccer game between Red Star Belgrade and Hajduk Split at the stadium when it was announced that Tito had died, a poster with 79 photos of changed street names in Split which occurred in the early 90’s because they had a foothold in the communist ideology. Parallel to these memories about Tito, Masha began her second art work called "Rusevine" (ruins), for which she received an invitation a couple of days ago to participate in the large-scaled project "Last Pioneers" in Zagreb. This project is organized to introduce the works of a young generation of artists whose themes in their work revolves around the recent history of the region through an intimate, introspective and autobiographical approach, which is organized by the association BLOK.
Masha’s fascination with the ruins created during the Civil War also began during her childhood. As she came to visit Croatia with her family they would drive through the war-torn regions, this artist fantasized about how the houses used to look like, who had lived in them and which games the children played which used to live there. During a trip in 2008 she started to point her lens at the war-devastated homes. - I didn’t focus on how or why these houses became ruins because it’s something everyone already knows. I'm more interested in what is happening in the present, such as the emotions caused by them. I think the energy that is caused by the events of war are still present that is why this subject is still frightening. It is therefore important that they are seen in order to learn to relate to the past. These ruins are painful, and I understand why we don’t like to talk about them. But I think it is important to conserve them and talk openly about the matter with the aim to educate future generations so that history wont repeat itself - said Masha, noting that she recently started photographing the inside of the ruins - I wanted to explore the other layers of the story, so I have started to enter the abandoned houses, which is offering a new and perhaps more personal tone to the work. I am interested to document the effects time has on these houses, for example, how nature takes place.
The ruins aren’t only an ethical issue but also architecturally interesting because of their unusual aesthetic and their new occurred function. Some of them are rebuild, but as the majority of people which return is quite old, they themselves joke that their main social gatherings relate to funerals and that in a few years their village will be empty again, and their reconstructed houses will again become ruins - said Masha.
For her it was not just emotionally hard to be on the field, but she has learned to cope with reactions of "criticism" as well. - I got a letter in Dutch, in which someone wrote that I am stupid and a liar because I’m not a Croat and therefore should remain silent. The truth is that I am born from a mixed marriage, that my father is Dutch, but for me this work has nothing to do with nationality or ethnicity of the owners of the destroyed houses. I think that someone with my backgrounds has a certain distance to the matter and can place things in a different perspective, by saying this I don’t mean it's better or worse, but it is simply my position. This work, however, is my contribution to the world to make it a better and nicer place. As one of the returnees that I have met said: "A house is a house, there is no reason to destroy a house because it can't be blamed for what happened" - concluded Masha.
She recently started to investigate "forgotten history" in Holland. Looking into changed street names in Amsterdam during World War II, which bore the names of Jewish people, social democrats and (living) members of the Royal Family which were replaced by the Nazi regime. - This is a "forgotten history" in the Netherlands but there we also have subjects we’re not proud of and taboos for example the collaboration with the Nazis, or colonialism, or the topic on workers from (for example) Turkey, Yugoslavia or Morocco who came to work here in the 60s which is presently an issue. And Srebrenica is certainly also one of those topics - said Masha.
by Sinisa Jovic 10/07/2011