Jasmina Cibic: Most Favoured Nation – Short Guide

Jasmina Cibic: Most Favoured Nation – Short Guide, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, 2022, accompanied Jasmina Cibic’s first solo exhibition in an Austrian museum, curated by Marijana Schneider. Conceived as an introduction to the exhibition’s spatial and conceptual framework, the publication traces Cibic’s investigations into the entanglements of state power, culture, diplomacy, and gender constructs through film, installation, performance, and architectural intervention.

The guide situates Most Favoured Nation within Cibic’s broader examination of “soft power” — the instrumentalisation of art and culture by political systems during moments of ideological and social crisis. Developed around a scenographic environment inspired by the tradition of the European salon, the exhibition brought together films, sculptural installations, archival references, and performative works examining how culture has historically been mobilised to stage national and transnational identities.

Texts by Schneider foreground the exhibition’s engagement with the fragile promises of European solidarity, international diplomacy, and collective political imagination, while reflecting on the role of artistic practice in exposing the mechanisms through which power is aestheticised and performed. The short guide functions both as an exhibition companion and as a concise introduction to the recurring methodologies within Cibic’s practice: archival reconstruction, choreographed display, allegory, and the critical reactivation of historical political narratives.