PORTFOLIO

Im engaged with researches, working in the field of photography, video and text, often in a form of photo - installations. My work is mostly an analytical relation towards reality which surrounds me - it is a realization of a set of ideas and ideals about seeing, thinking and representation. Working in the framework of a documentary practice, Im approaching to the initial themes or taking critical attitudes towards issues of identity, history, memory, the nature of the relationship between the local and the global, as well as master- and micro- narratives. In my work I try to produce new areas for re-reflecting the power of documentary materials and its potentials from the documentation of reality to the fictionalization of reality. In my work I am investigating the cultural, social and/or political circumstances in my country and the region, often with playful, ironic and humorous attitude. I use a symbolic language, putting forward a conceptual framework for (re)understanding the aspects of our contemporary life.

andrea palati

THE MINORITY /2011/ Photographs, in the series 25 photographs - inkjet prints Dimensions: 60 x 60 cm The project The minority is a series of photographs that showcase the celebrities of the Hungarian national minority in Vojvodina. The title The minority has the intention to allude to the term minority as a political and/or social construct, and to play around with the idea of how, and whether national identity can be reduced to a mere visual and/or a word. The series of photographs is an anthropological study, which notes a humorous and ironic way of the privileged public figures in the field of the popular minority culture. The idea to make pictures of the celebrities is brought into relation with the aesthetics and the concept of elite or vip, whose representatives occupy the absolute first place in the media culture. In some way, they represent us, and based on them, many people form their ideas about class, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, about 'us' and 'them'. Therefore, theatrically posed, but catching the off set gestures, the photographed models are a mixture of direct informations and enigmas about what they really are. Mapping the holders of success of a minority community, the series of photographs, in fact, aims to contextualize/re-contextualise/de-contextualise the phenomena related to the minority discourse, and to rethink the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, nationalism and globalism, minority and majority, the arts and the political and/or social circumstances.

Anik, The Minority, inkjet print, 60x60 cm

Hajnalka, The Minority, inkjet print, 60x60 cm

Urban Jungle girls, The Minority, inkjet print, 60x60 cm

BALKAN DISCO /2010-12/ Mixed media installation: 14 photographs, a neon lighting, disco ball, a bar-ledge, cigarettes, ashtrays Balkan Disco is a project that examines the image of the Balkan other in Italy. Disco Balkan is placed in Vicenza, Italy, and it is one of the rare places where Serbian Gastarbaiter can meet and enjoy in sounds of home. The menu at the discothque is the traditional Serbian turbo-folk music. The club also showcase occasionally amazing Serbian talents such are Mile Kiti, Indira Radi, Jelena Karleua, Aca Lukas, and The new stars of the Grand (Zvezde Granda). In the '90 turbo folk had a key role in defining the Serbian social and national identity. It promoted the ideology and lifestyle of the new criminal elite, consisting of nationalist politicians and wartime businessmen supporting the regime. Photographing and interviewing the owner of the disco, employers and the guests, I was trying to find out how these images of national identities are projected, and is this turbo-folk subculture just a perpetuated stereotypical view of Serbia and the Balkans.

Installation view, Shock gallery in Art clinic, Novi sad, Serbia, 2012. TRUCK DRIVERS, SHANERS, PROSTITUTES, PIMPS, HOUSE PAINTERS, WANNA-BE MODELS, GAYS, OLD-WOMAN FUCKERS ALL OF YOU WHO ARE SOMETHING FROM THIS AND IF YOU ARE LIVING IN ABARIJA! AND OF COURSE, IF YOU ARE A SERB! PERA, FROM THE FIRST SERBIAN INTERNET FORUM OF ITALY, WWW.SERBI.IT BEFORE VICENZA I LIVED IN FLORENCE, DOING EVERYTHING. I EVEN DRIVED A TRUCK BETWEEN 9598. AND I WAS FUCKING AN OLD LADY, FOR MONEY OF COURSE. I HAD 100.000 LIRAS FOR AN ORGASAM FOR HER ORGASAM. SHE HAD A HAIR SALON. ONE MORNING I WENT DOWN TO THE SALON, AND WHILE I WAS READING THE GAZZETA DE LA SPORTIVO, I HEARD THE DOOR, I TURNED IT WAS BATISTUTA! GABRIEL! I SWEAR! THEN, THE BARBER ASKED BATI, HOW ITS GOING TO BE? AND HE LOOKS AT ME AND SAIS: SAME AS THIS BOY! SO, WORD BY WORDCE COSSA THIS, CE COSSA THAT HE WAS A MODEST GUY, THAT BATI. EVERY PENNY HE EARNED, HE SENT TO HIS MOTHER TO ARGENTINA. I SWEAR! DEJAN (33), SECURITY AND AN EX-TRUCK DRIVER, POAREVAC-VICENZA

GOURMANDIZING PHOTOGRAPHY /2010/ Bege photo picnic - produced in the framework of Hybrid Media Camp Co-authored with Isidora Todorovi and Marko Ercegovi Collaborated with Aditya Mandayam Invited artists: Irma Pukarevi, Rina Vukobrati, Ivana Stojanovi, Ramona Hamilton Lindsay, Vojin Ivkov, Aleksandar Ramadanovi Mixed media installation: camera obscura made by gourd, melon, watermelon and Nescafe cans, photographs made by camera obscuras printed (silver gelatin prints) on cookies, artificial grass, blanket, pillows, basket and a cat. Exploring the relationship between nature and culture in the context of photographic creativity, using culinary texts in art, transforms photographic laboratory into a kitchen, into a place of creative and social production. Bege photo picnic is a culinary event/installation, which presents the idea of using edible and organic materials that can be found in the rural surrounding of the village Bege, as well as using the remains of the current consumerist system to produce photographic art. Camera obscuras made from watermelon and gourd, Nescafe cans, and exposed photographs made by these cameras to edible surfaces, are arranged as idyllic breakfast on the grass that calls the viewer to join the picnic. Bege photo picnic, in fact, transforms the institution of the museum into a place of photographic consumption. Using food as a cultural product, leads to the transformation of the act of cooking to an act of cultural processes (Levi-Strauss). Because, through the cook (the artist) as a cultural agent, natural/raw food becomes cooked food that goes through a process of socialization - from raw to cooked to rotten from nature to art and to history and in this case, to the deconstruction of the idyllic picnic on the grass.

Bege photo picnic at Hybrid Media Camps exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia

camera obscura made of gourd

camera obscura made of watermelon

STRABISMUS /2009/ Co-authored with Jelena Vladui Performance and photo installation Digital prints - the work consist of 100 scanned passport photos; dimensions: 14.4x18cm Strabismus is a condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other. Normally, when one looks at an object or an image, both eyes simultaneously focus the point of central eyesight. However, if both eyes aren't balanced in their movement, phenomena like double images and confusion may occur. Strabismus (squint, lazy eye, crossed eyes) is pretty obvious in the most of the portrait photographs in the new Serbian passports. After a series of name and passport changing, Serbia started issuing new biometric passports which no longer bear the name Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The new biometric passports have a red cover with a biometric passport symbol at the bottom, and it is similar to those used in countries of European Union. By this change, Serbia is closer to the security measures listed by Schengen requirements, which will eventually lead closer to the European Union. But, is it - being squint-eyed, one of the condition for people from Serbia to travel visa-free into the Europe? Or is it an inheritance from our ancestors? Is our strabismus maybe the strabismus of our state? Who is competent for a prescription for our treatment? Is there a treatment at all? And when can you say that portraits of people of one country represent the portrait of the country itself?

Strabismus, at the exhibition Collective Man, Dom omladine, Belgrade 2009.

Strabismus

GIRLS /2008-12/ Mixed media - installation: 18 photographs in a cardboard frame dimensions: 14.5x20.5 cm, table, biedermeier flowers, first communion certificate, old private first communion photograph, deciduous teeth in a small plastic specimen, angel doll, confetti Intended only to private communication/collection, portrait photographs from the event of the first communion and the junior graduation, represents one of the most important occasions in young girls lives. As a symbolic turning point in life, these memories photographs, depict an important anthropological study in the field of fashion, representation, lifestyle and religion. Therefore, my intention was to formulate an alternative way of presenting the private celebrational photographs, and to produce new areas for re-reflecting the relationship between private and public. The photographs were made in the period when I was an official photographer at the Church of Maria, the Church of St. Elisabeth in Novi Sad and arko Zrenjanin elementary school in Gospodjinci.

Installation view, Shock gallery in Art clinic, Novi sad, Serbia, 2012.

Installation view, Shock gallery in Art clinic, Novi sad, Serbia, 2012.

ALBANIA, A NEW MEDITERRANEAN LOVE* /2008/ Photo installation, 4 photographs of bunkers and 1 dog - lambda prints Dimensions: 100 x 100 cm and 50 x 50 cm From 1945 to 1990, Albania had one of the most repressive authorities in Europe. Communist dictator Enver Hoxha forbade religion, ruined lots of churches and mosques, closed the country's borders, forbade the freedom of speech, and the youth at the age of fifteen were trained in defense strategy. He built thousands of bunkers in case of enemy attacks which never occurred. These bunkers were made of reinforced concrete and iron, and were mostly just big enough to hold two people and their rifles. The model bunkers were tested on dogs. There are approximately 700.000 military bunkers throughout the country, and they are everywhere: on the beaches and mountains, in vineyards and pastures, in villages and towns, even on the manicured lawns of Albania's best hotels. Today, some of them have become the meeting points for lovers.

*Touristic slogan of Republic of Albania and its promotional clip on the American network CNN, (www.albaniantourism.com)

Installation view, 255.804 km2 / Young art from the former Yugoslavia, Brot Kunsthalle, Vienna photo by Sandro Zanzinger

ANDREA PALASTI 2012 @: struron@gmail.com Web: http://cargocollective.com/andreapalasti