Serbian. I became a great Serbian democrat at the time. I was educated as a Yugoslav, as cosmopolite. My father was a communist,
he fought the War….
Your sculpture of the period became also very engaged?
In the ‘90’s all of Serbia became one great flea market, I had
no longer any need to go to the junk. Where ever one would go,
markets, streets, absolutely everywhere, there was a flea and thrift
market. Afterwards, some of us would go regularly to the flea market, Srka, Papic, Neskovic, every now and then Srba Travanov, and
me. We never had to fight for objects, because we all searched for
different things and we all followed our own ideas. We started in
1997/98 Srka had a van and than, later on, we would go with Papic’s
car. We would all buy different things and we all had different buying
possibilities. Then, we would go to the studio of one of us, to brag
with our purchases, our little treasures. Strangely enough, none of
the curators ever noticed we all worked with the flea market material. The only one that made this connection is Danijela Puresevic.
I was reflecting intensely upon monumental sculpture and I
was working for some time at nanoliths. Those were monolith sculptures in a small format whose realisation made them appear very
monumental, but I never realised them in their full size. Maybe that
was the most conceptual approach to sculpture that I’ve ever had.
Let’s say that it was then that I, inspired by the Warhol’s phrase on
15 minutes of celebrity for all, made a model for a monument. I
wanted everybody to be a monument for fifteen minutes, that anyone can enter the sculpture and be a monument for fifteen minutes
somewhere. Of course, this was never realised, let alone exhibited.
Lots of sculptures had a war inspiration. My work “Trifle
Rifle” (“Toy Theft” - Igracka Pljacka) was created during the wars in
Croatia and Bosnia. We all know what that war was like. The basement of the sculpture is a music box and instead of the ballerina figurine revolving in the centre, there was a soldier figurine. The word
game – trifle rifle – was quite an appropriate title. It wasn’t too big,
60x40x30 cm.
In the ‘90’s, in East Europe they started to destroy the busts
of Lenin, I used them for my sculptures. I also used other elements.
For example, the Wehrmacht overcoats, that were used both by the
Književne novine, 1986
123