Cem A.: Museum open until further notice

What does it mean when we read on a museum door: “open until further notice”? Is it simply an administrative note about opening hours, or could it be a proposal to imagine the museum as an open-ended process, something that is never fully complete?
It is from this ambiguity that Cem A. begins his first solo exhibition in the region. Under the title “Museum open until further notice”, he examines the museum as an institution that seeks to be accessible, inclusive, and contemporary, yet remains burdened by hierarchies, rules, and restrictions.

Cem A. plays with clichés, administrative excuses, bureaucracy, nationalist policies, and structural pressures that shape museum practice. The exhibition title alludes to the uncertainty that defines contemporary institutions. “Open until further notice” is both an administrative phrase and a political metaphor, a signal of conditionality, impermanence, and dependence on the dynamics of socio-economic upheavals.

The exhibition “Museum open until further notice” approaches the museum not simply as a an institution, but as a living organism that grows or stagnates depending on culture, power relations, and social dynamics intersect. The artist asks: when we say that a museum is “open,” do we mean it is physically accessible, genuinely inclusive, or is it merely a formal, declarative gesture that conceals structures of exclusion?
Cem A. develops his practice at the intersection of digital culture and institutional space. He shifts institutional critique away from the elitist language of theory, toward popular, everyday communication, precisely where critical thought can be most effective. His works, graphic signs, short texts, ready mades, and installations, use the мeme as an accessible and democratic medium, a form that is comprehensible, shareable, and often subversive.

The meme represents a kind of “decentralized creativity,” one that does not depend on institutional authority or elite channels of art production, relying instead on a horizontal network of sharing and reproduction. Its political force lies in its ability for constant circulation, repetition, and repurposing, eroding the power of institutional authorship. While traditional museums often reproduce vertical hierarchies between art and audience, the meme functions as a “counter-language”: accessible, informal, and deeply political. The exhibition uses this potential to rethink the museum not merely as a guardian of cultural heritage or autonomous artistic value, but as a space where decentralized, non-elite, everyday creativity becomes part of a broader political imagination.

For Cem A., the meme is not just a tool for humor or internet gestures, but a cultural practice that allows critique to be shared and understood beyond the borders of “high” culture. It is a tool for intervention in the sphere of cultural production and a method for collective recognition of the conditions in which we all participate: a simple phrase, an image, or a text-situation of absurdity that raises questions about who has access to art and how it communicates with its audience.

What may seem like a joke becomes a way to address serious issues: storage rooms full of unseen artworks, the distance between art and community, the bureaucratic rules that sometimes make the museum less open than its name suggests.
The artist treats the museum as a “counter-screen”: a place where digital micro-narratives of resistance and irony are translated into physical space and gain institutional visibility. In this sense, “Museum open until further notice” articulates the museum as a political subject negotiating between its institutional rigidity and today’s demand for openness, ethics, and social relevance.

“Museum open until further notice” is not only a title but an open question: what does the museum mean today, is it truly open, and for whom? How can it remain a meaningful space of inclusion and dialogue, not just “until further notice,” but collectively and continuously?

Curators: Jovanka Popova and Nikola Uzunovski

Opening: September 18, 2025, 6:00 pm

The exhibition is financially supported by the SAHA Foundation and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of North Macedonia.

MoCA – Skopje friend: Tikveš.