For Our Economy and Culture

For Our Economy and Culture is a publication that expands Jasmina Cibic’s research into the relationship between art, architecture, and state power, developed for Cibic’s project for the Slovenian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennial.

Bringing together essays by Petja Grafenauer, Tevž Logar, Nika Grabar, Jane Rendell, Lina Džuverović and Suzana Milevska, alongside archival material and visual documentation, the book examines how cultural production is mobilised as a tool of national representation and soft power.

It focuses on key historical moments—from parliamentary debates on public art commissions to the construction of state architecture—revealing how aesthetic decisions are shaped by political agendas.

Through this layered approach, the publication traces recurring strategies used by different regimes to construct collective identity, highlighting the continuity of the logic of visual and rhetorical languages across ideological shifts.

Rather than presenting history as fixed, the book exposes it as a constructed narrative, shaped through selection, omission, and reinterpretation. In doing so, it positions culture as both an instrument of power and a site through which that power can be critically examined.