In Depth
The Foundation of Endeavour centred on the artist’s ongoing investigation into political gifts of culture, exploring their role within national and ideological structures during moments of European crisis in the twentieth century. The historical case studies Cibic drew upon spoke directly to the present moment, in which culture had once again become a battleground in the rise of populism and its systematic attack on critical thought, bringing to the fore the complex relationship between culture and the state.
Cibic is known for her examination of the mechanisms of soft power and the strategies through which national culture is constructed, mobilised, and instrumentalised. Her projects, realised through film and theatrical installation, arise from a meticulous process of archival research and collaborative production aimed at exposing patterns, structures, and effects that might otherwise remain invisible. For the artist, this constitutes a form of performative practice: a critical exercise in the dissection of statecraft.
The protagonists of The Foundation of Endeavour were a series of what Cibic termed “historical ready-mades”: cultural forms that had functioned as political devices during key post-traumatic moments in twentieth-century European history. Rather than commissions, each of these examples was a gift—an offering made by political elites with the aim of preventing conflict and fostering national and international cohesion.
The exhibition began with the first chapter of Cibic’s film The Gift. The film’s locations were themselves examples of political gifts: the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Oscar Niemeyer’s French Communist Party Headquarters in Paris, and Mount Buzludzha in Bulgaria. Its narrative followed three allegorical protagonists—the Gifts of Art, Music, and Dance—as they competed in the final round of a contest to identify the ideal gift for a divided nation. The script was drawn from archival discussions on soft power and cultural diplomacy that had informed some of Europe’s most significant architectural and artistic manifestations of political gifting.
The film’s themes extended into a theatrical mise-en-scène occupying the adjacent galleries. The first space presented a performative installation based on unrealised musical compositions donated to the Palais des Nations. On the occasion of the exhibition’s opening, these compositions were performed for the first time by two percussionists engaged in a looped exchange of anthems and marches—musical forms intimately tied to the nation state, both in its formation and its dissolution. The snare drums were adorned with painted proposals for a League of Nations flag, another series of donations submitted by professional and amateur artists from around the world. No official flag was ever adopted, however, due to concerns that a single emblem might provoke nationalist sentiment within this transnational political project.
In the second gallery, a salon-style installation presented two photographic series of objects similarly charged with the symbolic power of political gifts. The first depicted batons that were used in the Relay of Youth, an annual event in former Yugoslavia organised to celebrate the birthday of President Tito. Participants from all six republics carried and exchanged the battens across the federation of republics - as part of an effort to promote cohesion and anti-nationalist sentiment. Between 1957 and 1987, the batons were designed by artists and ceremonially presented to Tito as gifts. The second series portrayed roses bred and named after key figures of the European project, including Sandro Pertini, Konrad Adenauer, and Charles de Gaulle. Dramatically lit against dark backdrops, these symbolic objects acquired an additional layer of meaning as moths and insects crawled across their surfaces. Referencing the tradition of vanitas painting, they served as reminders of the inevitable transformation of ideology and socio-political memory.
The exhibition culminated in a photographic portrait of one of Slovenia’s most contested national emblems: the Lipizzaner horse, the only horse breed developed in Slovenia. In 2009, the Lipizzaner 508 Neapolitano Thais XL was presented as an official state gift to Muammar Gaddafi, just two years before his death. This literal embodiment of the Trojan horse—a gift offered under the guise of diplomacy yet shaped by political interests—served as a reminder of how easily culture could become not only a pawn within soft-power strategies, but also complicit in the production and circulation of ideology.
Long after the beliefs and political projects in whose name they were given had crumbled, these gifts remain active traces of the socio-political glue that once sought to bind communities together. Yet they also reveal how cultural symbols are continually adapted, repurposed, and mobilised by new political actors, reminding viewers of what is at stake when the bond between culture and society begins to unravel.
