All That We Have in Common

The exhibition tends to explore the precarious socially critical production of discourses and its manifestations, as well as to analyze the conditions of insecurity in the capitalist local and global context by certain artworks and practices. The exhibition addresses works that show the potential of art as a politic.

The selected artists explore this territory using the available human and physical resources in the direction of social action for the common good with the intention to show that a more aggressive form of resistance in the artwork is possible. This requires imagination transformed into a “new labor”, but also a joint association into new forms of political action in the special and global domains of insecurity.

“All That We Have in Common relates to situations we all witness and live in, connected to vulnerability and existential insecurity, economic injustice, political manipulation, poor regulation of labor rights, the myth of free speech, conspiracy theories that spread nationalism, labor exploitation, contemporary racial violence, the struggles of queer movements, the consequences on the psyche and body of political “discipline” in different contexts and situations, in Macedonia, the region and the world. At the same time, the exhibition encourages us to question the way we perceive our current situation, to suggest scenarios for some new future alliances and free territories, and to make us think about how our individual visions, and responsibilities can be socially shared in order to serve to collective purposes”, is the statement of the curators Mira Gakjina and Jovanka Popova.

If capitalism inevitably seeks to focus on the self, the exhibition raises the questions: – What is the world like when it is experienced, developed, and lived from the perspective of differences, not identity? What are the ways in which solidarity and care for the other can be a point of resistance against the capitalist order? In that direction, the presented works will explore the links between solidarity and politics as well as the possible feasible and positive alternatives that create new spaces that affect the public through the private, the captive state through everyday action,  that results in new types of associations, organization, structures, and institutions.

The main goal is to offer artistic interpretation and deeper analysis of radical leftist policies and practices that address the concept of cognition of diversity and solidarity at the local and global level, researched and presented through artistic action.

Works by Francis Alÿs, Marwa Arsanios, Kristina Bozurska, Sharon Hayes, Arthur Jafa, Hiwa K, OPA (Obsessive Possessive Aggression), Jonas Staal, Igor Toshevski, Wu Tsang, Dardan Zhegrova will be featured.

Curators of the exhibition are Mira Gakjina and Jovanka Popova.

Design of visual identity: Neda Firfova

Photo-credit: Maja Argakieva

The project is realized with the support of The Ministry of Culture of Republic of North Macedonia, EVN Macedonia and Tikves.