The Gallery of Non-Aligned, Installation view: exhibition Das Andere, Kunsthaus Graz
The Gallery of Non-Aligned continues Cibic’s engagement with a highly specific set of archives, revisiting collections shaped by acts of political gifting—gestures intended to establish and sustain national and transnational relations through culture.
The series presents photographic portraits of selected sculptures from the collection of the Art Gallery of the Non-Aligned Countries, held at the Centre for Contemporary Art of Montenegro. This collection remains the only official repository of artworks donated by heads of state, cultural workers, and artists from countries of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The Non-Aligned Movement can be understood as one of several critical “anti-systemic world-making projects” (Getachew) emerging after the Second World War: a form of transnational solidarity that proposed a counter-hegemonic vision of modernisation and globalisation, largely articulated outside the European sphere, with the notable exception of socialist Yugoslavia. In this context, NAM offered alternatives not only to Cold War binaries, but also to the enduring asymmetries between North and South following colonial rule.
Cibic’s series focuses exclusively on sculptures of the female form—torsos, busts, and heads—figures that operate as allegories of emerging “mother-nations.” Photographed against saturated, colour-field backgrounds, the works evoke the visual language of flags and national iconographies. At the same time, the surfaces of the sculptures are marked by moths, introducing references to decay, erosion, and vanitas traditions. These elements register the fragility of the political imaginaries the works once embodied, foregrounding what is at stake in the forgetting of alternative models of world-making.
The project is made with support of the Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries Laboratory project at Centre of Contemporary Art Montenegro. The Laboratory is led and developed by a team of curators and conservators: Marina Šaranović, Anita Ćulafić, Nada Baković and Natalija Vujošević.
