Nada: Act I

In this interview with Chris Clarke, Cibic discusses her research-driven practice as an ongoing investigation into the relationship between culture and political power.

She reflects on her use of film as a narrative extension of installation, developing allegorical characters as archetypes that condense historical and political positions. These figures allow her to work with archival material while exposing the persistent similarities in political rhetoric across different regimes and time periods.

Cibic emphasises her interest in the construction and manipulation of archives, focusing on what is omitted, censored, or translated, and using these gaps to reimagine history through a feminist and critical lens. Across works such as The Gift, the NADA trilogy, and State of Illusion, she examines how art and architecture are instrumentalised, often revealing that the processes of selection, mediation, and censorship are more significant than the final cultural object itself.

Architecture plays a central role in her films, functioning not merely as a setting but as an active agent that choreographs action and embodies ideological histories. These sites—often former centres of political power—are approached as spaces of reenactment, where past and present narratives intersect.

Cibic also addresses the shifting role of culture today, arguing that traditional notions of soft power have been transformed under neoliberal conditions, where cultural production is increasingly tied to economic value and institutional survival. Rather than offering fixed conclusions, she positions her work as a platform for critical reflection, using humour, allegory, and repetition to expose the cyclical and often absurd dynamics of power, representation, and ideology.

This essay by Maja and Reuben Fowkes examines Jasmina Cibic’s film practice as a critical exploration of cultural diplomacy and the ideological role of art and architecture in shaping political identities. Focusing on works such as Fruits of Our Land, The Pavilion, the Nada trilogy, and The Gift, the authors show how Cibic constructs scripted debates performed by archetypal figures within historically charged architectural settings—to reveal how culture has been instrumentalised in moments of political crisis and international representation.

The text highlights how Cibic reactivates overlooked histories of modernism and re-stages past cultural conflicts to expose recurring tensions between artistic autonomy and state agendas, particularly around how nations present themselves on the global stage. Across her films, architecture becomes an active agent, while dialogue—assembled from historical speeches and cultural discourse—unfolds as a performative negotiation of ideology, memory, and power. The essay ultimately positions Cibic’s work as a form of critical “Trojan horse,” reintroducing the emancipatory, transnational, and feminist potentials of socialist modernity as an alternative to contemporary capitalist and nationalist frameworks.

In his essay, Vladimir Kulić reads Jasmina Cibic’s NADA trilogy as an exploration of architecture’s role as a medium of national representation, arguing that modern architecture functions not merely as a backdrop to power, but as an active instrument in constructing the image of the nation.

He traces this through key historical examples used by Cibic in her films—from Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion to Yugoslav and West German pavilions—showing how architecture became a performative stage for political identity, diplomacy, and ideology. Across these cases, Kulić reveals how modernist forms are repeatedly mobilised by radically different regimes, undermining any stable link between architectural style and political meaning.

Central to his argument is the idea of a persistent but unstable “relationship” between architecture and the nation. While architecture promises to give form and visibility to national identity, it is constantly mediated by external forces—state power, media, and geopolitical agendas—that distort and instrumentalise it. Even the most refined modernist spaces are shaped by these pressures, becoming photogenic images designed for circulation rather than fixed meanings.

Kulić ultimately frames this relationship as a paradox: nations depend on architecture to represent themselves, yet modern architecture—rooted in ideals of universality and internationalism—can never fully embody a singular national identity. What remains is a cycle of projection and reinvention, sustained by the enduring hope that architecture might finally give stable form to the nation, even as this goal remains perpetually out of reach.

Balsom centres her analysis of Cibic’s NADA film trilogy on the recurring figure of “woman-as-nation,” highlighting the contradiction between women’s symbolic role as embodiments of national ideals and their historical exclusion from political power. For Balsom, Cibic exposes this gap between representation and lived reality, using it as a critical entry point into the mechanisms of nation-building.

Balsom also emphasises the role of myth and spectacle: in NADA, cultural narratives are reconfigured to show how art is mobilised, manipulated, and sometimes sacrificed in the service of national agendas. The figure of “Mother Nation” becomes both agent and victim within these processes, embodying the tensions between desire, control, and representation.

Rather than proposing a return to past political or artistic models, Balsom reads Cibic’s work as a critical engagement with the legacy of modernism—foregrounding how art, gender, and state power remain entangled, and how their historical contradictions continue to shape contemporary political realities.

In her text, Katia Baudin situates Cibic’s Gesamtkunstwerk The Spirit of Our Needs and the NADA film trilogy within the historical and architectural context of the Mies van der Rohe villas in Krefeld, framing the exhibition as a site-responsive inquiry into the entanglement of modernism, cultural production, and power.

She highlights Cibic’s research-driven, interdisciplinary approach, showing how the artist reactivates modernist architecture—particularly its function within world exhibitions and trade fairs—as a vehicle of national representation and soft power. The villas themselves emerge as spaces shaped by cultural capital, private wealth, and patriarchal structures, which Cibic critically reworks through installation and film.

Baudin emphasises how the work exposes the alignment of aesthetics with systems of authority and identity formation, using immersive environments and allegorical strategies to reveal the tension between artistic autonomy and ideological function. Rather than treating modernism as a neutral legacy, she frames Cibic’s project as a re-engagement with its contradictions, underscoring the continued political charge of cultural production within contemporary institutional contexts.