Cibic’s practice is grounded in the use of archives and historical ready-mades, which she juxtaposes as a method of tracing patterns across time. The series Instructions (2015) marked the artist’s first encounter with the archive of albums gifted to Josip Broz Tito by official state photographers, commissioned to accompany diplomatic travels and document visits of foreign leaders to former Yugoslavia. Over decades of research, Cibic has continued to sift through this material, isolating images of landscapes—moments captured in the absence of political actors. These seemingly neutral views pose a question: are they sites of aesthetic contemplation, or carefully staged terrains of political encounter?
Cibic intervenes in these photographs through collage, introducing incisions that echo architectural forms deployed by the state as instruments of spatial and ideological framing. This secondary layer of construction disrupts the image’s original composition, inserting new geometries into the landscape and exposing the mechanisms through which place is produced and represented.
The photographers, “employed by the state,” documented the scenographic backdrops of Yugoslav diplomacy across the member states of the Non-Aligned Movement, contributing to the visual language of an emerging geopolitical project. By cutting into and reconfiguring these images, Cibic overlays them with motifs drawn from the aesthetic vocabulary of the movement, destabilising their status as “nationally representative” views and opening them to speculative reinterpretation of the emerging transnational seeds.
Together, these works interrogate the production of national and transnational consciousness, raising questions about the resilience of cultural production when entangled in shifting political agendas and its persistent role as both instrument and witness within systems of power.
Works
Add greatly to the attractiveness of the things you are showing
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
48 cm x 35.8 cm
Apply the timeless lessons of the past and a love of natural forms
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
39.8 cm x 31 cm
Bring more and more people to see it
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
31.8 cm x 31.8 cm
Build boldly, build swiftly, build well
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
30 cm x 35.5 cm
Celebrate more than just economic values
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
48 cm x 35.8 cm
Desire to be distinctive
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
40 cm x 29.4 cm
Display things beautifully
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
29 cm x 21.7 cm
Do not be carried away with architectural decorations and aesthetic adornment
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
Do not build absolutely unjustified towers or place pieces of sculpture on them
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
32.7 cm x 29 cm
Do not dump the limited heritage you have
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
40 cm x 28 cm
Do not employ ornaments and various decorative elements
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
39 cm x 32 cm
Do not feel guilty about a preference for ornaments
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
36.8 cm x 30 cm
Do not ignore the necessary devices of the past
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
39.8 cm x 31.8 cm
Do not stop expressing the future
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
29 cm x 18 cm
Do not employ ornaments and various decorative elements
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
39 cm x 32 cm
Draw back the curtain of the future
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
22 cm x 17 cm
Draw on the ideas that have swept the world in the last decade
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
26 cm x 18.8 cm
Establish conditions for firm foundations
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
44.6 cm x 36 cm
Express yourself through the fundamental ingredients that define a genuine civilisation
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
48 cm x 60 cm
Fight against formalisms
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
32 cm x 40.7 cm
Find the artistic expression of our times
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
40.3 cm x 30.8 cm
Focus on the exciting and the new
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
35 cm x 26 cm
Get rid of the obstacles to enterprise
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
42.4 cm x 32 cm
Give expression to common desires
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
47 cm x 34.3 cm
Glory must be ceaselessly renewed
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
42 cm x 39.5 cm
Gradually discard superfluities
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
29 cm x 36 cm
Make a plan that can be effective in accomplishing its purpose
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
32 cm x 43.6 cm
Make decisions
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
40 cm x 27.2 cm
Our city must strike all the nations of the world as a source of wonder
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
60 cm x 44 cm
Perform the basic sense of possession
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
40.6 cm x 56.5 cm
Prepare for the commerce of the future
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
46.7 x 60 cm
Produce something that is visually beautiful as well as socially useful
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
30 cm x 22 cm
Relate sensitively to the total environment
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
45 cm x 30.4 cm
Renovate and relaunch
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
34 cm x 60 cm
Restore harmony and balance
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
46.7 cm x 60 cm
Seek to conserve all that is best
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
37 cm x 30 cm
Set tremendous standards
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
26 cm x 35.3 cm
Show the land in which a wide space for national progress is ensured
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
47 cm x 34.8 cm
Stand against superfluities
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
32 cm x 33 cm
Stand on the shoulders of those who go before you
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
60 cm x 56.4 cm
Take loads of pictures, put them in a coffee-table book, then knock the thing down
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
22 cm x 30 cm
Wipe the slate clean
2015
Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, collage
Installation views
Installation view, exhibtion The Nation Loves It (solo), curated by Róna Kopeczky, Ludwig Museum Budapest, 2015, photo: Tamás Bujnovszky
Exhibition Projects
Spielraum: an exhibition in three acts
2015
An exploration of art and architecture as the stages upon which political identities are imagined, performed, and ultimately reimagined.
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