‘’Sex and Politics’’ is the theme of this year’s BL Art Festival, which is traditionally held in the ‘’Incel’’ Social and Cultural Center, located in the grounds of the former factory of the same name – a sad monument to socialist realism. Analyzing the manifestos of contemporary society, deconstructing and disentangling the basic influences on personal identity that the individual does not influence. Everyday life remains difficult, arising from already established social rules, opening up space for intensive critical dissertation. Through various forms of expression, the artworks that unite this year’s BL Art Festival provoke the audience and invite them to critically reflect on the established beliefs and rules that create the dynamics and consciousness of contemporary society. Focusing on the issue of gender, sexuality and identity, the artists illuminate how social constructs and political structures shape individual experiences. The artworks that the audience has the opportunity to witness question established social norms and conventions, whether through an ironic approach, audience participation or direct confrontation with taboo topics. Through this approach, the artists challenge the status quo. And sex and politics have never been hotter. Men have primary control over social, political, economic and cultural institutions. Domination is expressed through various social practices and customs and is accompanied and perpetuated by appropriate social ideologies. Patriarchy remains honor and tradition, and any deviation represents the degradation of all those noble segments in man. And around him. We can clearly see the exploration of gender identity and discrimination in various cultural policies in the work ‘’U velu govora gorčine’’ by artist Ivana Ranisavljević. Connecting the past and the present, she points to the continuity of problems and generational trauma to which women are exposed in different societies and historical periods. Ivana Ranisavljević involves the audience in the action of traditional embroidery of sentences that describe personal or other people’s experiences of violation of women’s rights and freedoms. These sentences, embroidered on white canvas, symbolize the transformation of individual painful experiences into a collective cultural statement and an impulse for change. Gender discrimination and the creation of personal identity are also addressed by the artist Dunja Čorlomanović in her installation ‘‘Decent Girls Don’t Drive Trucks’’. She raises the question of gender discrimination, individuality and the right to an authentic decision. Do decent girls not talk about their problems? The work uses the shapes and colours of signs that, according to traffic rules, are read as notifications, warnings and explicit orders, which reminds us of the problem of obligations, norms and the established view of the world in which a girl or woman should behave based on a pattern prescribed for generations. Patriarchal society represents a limiting subject not only towards girls and women, but also towards the entire social dynamic. Social rules under the veil of moral principles are placed on a pedestal in relation to individual emotions and consciousness. Generational shame becomes a form of affirmation that is propagated in everything we can see, feel and hear. We are ashamed of our parents, teachers, that friend standing next to us. We are ashamed of our mistress. We love our lover. Regardless, ‘‘Whatever is done will be a dick’’! Jana Jovašević approaches the tabooed relationships of sexuality and shame through irony, exposing the audience as the creator of a work of art. Have phallic forms never been closer to us? Jana Jovašević plays with the boundaries of individual shame and how imposed social norms create our sexuality. By performing a mental transfer, the work thus becomes a kind of psychological game, or a means of examining and overcoming various personal - emotional, erotic or artistic - inhibitions. The influence of the personal and collective unconscious makes art a place of liberation. The influences on the development of collective shame in individual identity are investigated by the Association of the Young and Horny, which includes Teodora Arsić and Vanja Ivanović. We become witnesses of ritual bathing that introduces us to the space of the spiritual, peaceful and satiated. I ask for less disgust among citizens. Take off your clothes completely, shame is a luxury, everyone should bathe because water is not expensive. Your back should be washed well. Cleanliness is a struggle, rubbing is an obligation. The body needs a drill because it is not an ordinary pear, the best way to bathe is to be washed by a strong male hand. There is no shame in public bathrooms. Dresses and underwear are taken off in order to care for the body, the skin and all the organs of order are washed. The body is not separated from the eye, look inside and out, the wound is deep. Force, breaks, splits, splashes, I will be impudent. “Pathos” explores the space within discomfort and exposure, private ritual and public performance, personal shame and political act, placing them in mutual interaction. Shame arises from the provocation of power that brings a collective sense of awe. We still do not know who we are afraid of! Ourself? No, not ourselves. Television! And pornography! ‘’Slavic Submission’’ through the pornographic identity of the public I am the stomach and intestines? Who am I the smell of saliva? Who am I mom, dad and all of you who climbed so that I wouldn't grow. buzzing feelings that we can only experience through personal experience. In this exhibition, Sofija Pavković examines a series of phenomena that merge, intertwine and become inseparable so that any narrative can be loaded into them. Are they divine interventions, lucid dreams, products of creative inspiration or AI-generated interpretations of faded memories of the same. The charm is that it can be everything, but also none of these. In Wagon, Pavković tries to create a hybrid space that resembles a lucid dream. Through visual and sound effects, she creates an amalgam of different stimuli in order to erase the boundaries between the creator and the observer and create a space for shared dreaming.
