Calendar

opening hours:
Wed.-Fri. 13:30 - 17:30 and by appointment

Venue:
HGB gallery
Wächterstraße 11
04107 Leipzig
www.hgb-leipzig.de/galerie
instagram.com/hgbgallery

Aesthetics and Practices of Women's Resistance in Yugoslavia and Carinthia
The Art of Women's Resistance in Yugoslavia and Carinthia
Umetnost ženskega odpora v Jugoslaviji in na Koroškem
Umjetnost ženskoga otpora u Jugoslaviji i u Koruškoj

The resistance of women in the territories of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe occupied by Nazi Germany is hardly a topic in Germany and Austria. This is all the more true of the resistance in Yugoslavia, which has increasingly disappeared from European memory since the collapse of the state. But it was precisely here that there was a nationwide resistance movement that successfully fought back against racist and exploitative violence and liberated the country from occupation. An unusually large number of women were involved in this liberation movement, taking part in the struggle both as helpers, with weapons and artistically. This is why the artistic-scientific exhibition Partizan★ke Art focuses on the female resistance against the German occupation forces and the Axis powers in Yugoslavia and Carinthia/Koroška, which is still barely visible today.

Behind the term "partisan art" lies a fascinating phenomenon that is unrivalled in art production: by this we mean art as resistance or culture as a subversive practice of Yugoslav and Carinthian-Slovenian partisans. The protagonists of the resistance were on the one hand part of the art avant-garde and on the other hand peasants who expressed themselves in traditional forms of folk art. The subversive culture they created, i.e. literature, visual arts, film, photography, comics, textiles, graphic art, theatre, dance and monumental architecture, will be shown as part of a European history of resistance in the exhibition Partizan★ke Art at the HGB Gallery from April 2025 and flanked by a supporting programme (see below).

The gender-theoretical approach makes it possible to highlight the emancipatory content of resistance and its ambivalences. The art of resistance is emphasised through a focus on the partisans and artists Mira Alečković, Magda Bošan Simin, Greta Čaće, Lela Čermak, Vera Crvenčanin, Vera Obrenović Delibašić, Lujo Davičo, Cvijeta Job, Ina Jun-Broda, Elvira Kohn, Helena Kuchar, Hanna Levy-Hass, Mitra Mitrović, Marta Paulin (Brina), Jara Ribnikar, Mira Sanjina, Stella Skopal. The exhibition also focusses on the question of how these subversive art practices were taken up again after the war in contemporary art positions, continued and further developed - right up to the present day.

The exhibition project sees itself as a contribution to the debate on a reorientation of European remembrance culture, which aims to strengthen diversity in remembrance discourses on the one hand and close existing gaps in perception on the other. The project is therefore set up as a long-term process. A version of the exhibition was shown at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts in January 2025. The exhibition, newly conceived for the gallery of the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, will subsequently be shown in Berlin, Munich, Klagenfurt/Celovec and Vienna. Further stops of the exhibition are planned in the former Yugoslavian region.

Programme (download):

09.04. Opening & drinks

24.04. Angelika Waniek & Inga Martel: pay attention, reconnect

24.04. Ljubavni slucaj ili tragedija sluzbenice P.T.T
Film screening 7 pm

25.04. Julia Blume: "Wächterstraße 11 - A magazine of the National Socialist Student Association of the Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Trade 1940-1945. An insight into the history of the HGB Leipzig"

30.04. Katharina Pressl / Daniel Gönitzer: "Zero points of violence"

08.05. Ko to pamo peva?
Film screening 7 pm

09.05. Oliver Neef: "Forced labour and resistance in Leipzig. Biographies of former forced labourers"

10.05. Museum Night Halle & Leipzig: exhibition open 6 pm-12 am | guided tours: 7+9 pm

15.05. The Other Line
Film screening 7 pm

Project management and coordination: Brigita Malenica and Elena Messner

Curated by: Carla Maruscha Fellenz, Sabina Ferhadbegović, Cosmo Großbach, Goran Lazičić, Elena Messner, Brigita Malenica, Julia Stolba

Artistic positions: Fritzi Bosch, Carla Maruscha Fellenz, Cosmo Großbach, Kassandra, Lea Petry, Merlin Rainer (Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig), Leja Jurišić (dancer, choreographer, Ljubljana), Bara Kolenc (Faculty of Philosophy Ljubljana), Davor Konjikušić (freelance artist), Dana Rausch (freelance artist), Julia Stolba (University of Fine Arts Hamburg)

Scientific video essay: Stanislava Barać (Institute for Literature and Art, Belgrade), Sabina Ferhadbegović (Friedrich Schiller University Jena), Lea Furbach (University of Kassel), Daniel Gönitzer (University of Vienna), Ana Hoffner (artist, curator)nstler, curator), Jakob Holzer (Vienna University of Technology), Katja Kobolt (Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts), Goran Lazičić (University of Graz), Brigita Malenica (freelance curator), Tijana Matijević (Institute ofr Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade), Elena Messner (University of Vienna), Aleksandra Momčilović (Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade), Ana Rajković Pejić (Croatian Institute of History), Ljubinka Škodrić (Institute of Contemporary History, Belgrade), Nora Sternfeld (Hochschule für Bildende Kunst Hamburg), Katarzyna Taczyńska (Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences), Zlatan Tunjić (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg), Dubravka Zima (Faculty of Croatian Studies, Zagreb)

Texts: Sabina Ferhadbegović, Goran Lazičić, Brigita Malenica, Elena Messner

Graphic design: Fritzi Bosch, Carla Maruscha Fellenz

Video production: Elena Messner, Julia Stolba

Scientific support: Ana Adamović (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna), Cristina Beretta (Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt/Celovec), Hana Ćurak (Institute for European Ethnology, Berlin), Gal Kirn (Faculty of Philosophy, Vienna).ethnology, Berlin), Gal Kirn (Faculty of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana), Jelena Petrović (Central European University, Vienna), Tatjana Rosić Ilić (Faculty of Media and Communication, Belgrade)

Partners:

Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst / Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
HFBK / wartenau arteducation, the University of Vienna
Institute for Slavic Studies at the Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt/Celovec
FWF - The Austrian Science Fund
WerkStattmuseum/delavnicaMuzej
kärnten.museum
Društvo/Association Peršman
ZKP- Zveza koroških partizanov in prijateljev protifašističnega odpora, Muzej Jugoslavije, Muzej II zasjedanja AVNOJ-a

In cooperation with Elena Messner's research project "(Post-)Yugoslav feminist periodicals and their global cultural and literary context, University of Vienna (FWF)"