Mythmaking as a Collonisation Tactic 2008

Mythmaking as a Colonisation Tactic was a context and site-specific project realised for Cibic’s solo exhibition at the Tobacco Museum in Ljubljana. It consisted of a wall installation of a number of posters depicting well known tourist picturesque and sublime landscapes on top of which the artist had installed a number of drawings made after found photographs of hunters posing with their trophies.

As a recognisable work method, Cibic utilises systems, which are already in place, to create a moment that together with its contextual framework shapes the artwork. In his book After Theory, Terry Eagleton writes: “We cannot describe what is actually there without recourse to the beliefs and motivations which it involves”. Following this idea, Cibic draws from the existing tactics of industries which are based on formulating a desire in its audiences and questions their strategies of showing that endeavour to gain control of people’s desires and consequently strive for their implementation. However, it is in the nature of a fantasy that it has to remain unrealised. In this case the artwork uses the same strategy: it does not allow the real, honest, authentic or ecstatic experience, but only a souvenir as a “proof” that this experience really exists. It provides a vision of its desire in the form of its image.

But on the level of expressing what has been experienced, the personal involvement of the artist is staged as the “proofs” of experience are those of other people (hunters and photographers).