The exhibition “Arrivals-Departures” by visual artist Mladen Bundalo, staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska (MSURS), reads as a private diary of reflections on movement as a driver of change in human understanding of the world, identity, culture and belonging. The exhibition places the theme of migration in a wider perspective and speaks of it as a universal phenomenon inseparable from people, regardless of its scope and sway – whether a momentous, metamorphic change of course or the little, almost negligible movement we engage in on a daily basis.
Bundalo’s exhibition is arranged as a trajectory composed of works that move through the exhibition rooms, constructing a layered narrative about arrivals and departures, which looks at the themes of movement and life of expatriates from different angles of vision.
The works on display result from the artist’s contemplation of his life in light of the fact he created the larger part of his oeuvre abroad. While originally from Prijedor, Bundalo has been living away from his native town and country for the last fourteen years. He has lived in Brno, Paris, and Mons, and is currently living in Brussels.
The different situations he found himself in and the experiences he gained along the way are the central threads of his exhibition at the MSURS. He uses diverse media to build his visual language; thus, the works exhibited comprise drawings, prints, installations, texts, video art and films, which allows the viewer to see things from multiple perspectives.
While the exhibition theme is up-to-date and certainly carries strong political connotations, Bundalo approaches it in a personal and poetic way and seeks to put forward an alternative, more universal viewpoint. The viewers are given plenty of space to share their thoughts and sentiments or reflect on their position concerning the theme, but it also has the potential to spark off a debate about the meaning of movement and migration at a higher, collective level.
Although diverse in the sense of the media used, the presented works form a narrative unit that progresses smoothly and steadily and lets the public into Bundalo’s world, where anyone can situate themselves.
We are allowed into that world via drawings and prints based on knot and string theories. Bundalo connects the experience of movement with the mathematical structures and spaces that are the subject of knot theory, in which he situates his interpretations and experiences:
“We belong to knots which tangle into an infinite skein defined by there, here, before and after.”[1]
The knots can be viewed through the lens of the history of civilisation as an element that has been present in people’s lives for thousands of years, along with all the movement and changes humanity has experienced on its development path. The laser-engraved knots are Bundalo’s visions of a spectrum of courses and trajectories.
On the other hand, superstring theory, which comes from theoretical physics, refers to the complex, multidimensional movement and, from our perspective, the erratic behavior of subatomic particles. According to this model, the string is the fundamental element of the structure of the universe and underlies the assumptions about the origin of gravitational force.
In Bundalo’s case, movement is the main link, with each of the string drawings corresponding to a moment in his life, each displayed with a text that reveals to us a part of the artist’s private world.
“Things happen on these paths.
They begin to vibrate and turn into strings.
The strings become entwined, tangle into knots.
These knots inhabit our bodies, expand and oscillate.
They exit through our skin, hair, words and states.”[2]
The strings lead us to the space of “Hypermigration”, a video and installation that develop the theme of migration as part of the broader context of social changes brought about by the biological, sociological, economic and historical aspects of this phenomenon.
Moving through physical space, the narrative thread of the exhibition descends from scientific hypotheses to the “Earth”, to people and the phenomena migrations bring about in their lives. We find different aspects of this theme in the works that deal with issues of people’s identity and cosmopolitanism, which is the leitmotif of the interactive work “Welcome to Earth”.
Bundalo’s video essays and films let us into the world of the artist’s history, experiences and thoughts, as well as the perspectives of other people going through similar or identical processes, which he shows in his art.
Over the last few years, Bundalo has increasingly turned to film as his medium of choice to continue video explorations. The art of film has allowed him to deepen them by making autoethnographic documentaries. This is very evident in his current exploratory research into social practices or rituals related to departure.
The work titled “Every time you leave, you are born again” gives us a glimpse into the artist’s life. In it, he reminisces about his home and growing up, as he relates how every time he went away, his grandmother splashed water after him to say goodbye. The meaning of this ritual, its symbolic and emotional content, is a theme Bundalo has only just started to explore, and it remains to be seen where it will take him.
Everything Bundalo has done in his professional career so far, part of which the audience will have the opportunity to see at the MSURS, is an attempt on the part of the artist to understand society, social processes, the world we live in and his own life by creating art. However, each of us can use the exhibition as a mirror in which to reflect and examine ourselves and our attitudes, life choices and experiences, as to be evoked or materialised by the works on show.
Finally, there’s yet another aspect of the exhibition not to be overlooked: its venue, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska. Today, the building of the former Austro-Hungarian train station preserves and promotes modernity through the lens of art. The name of the exhibition brings back the original purpose of the venue and the history of departures and arrivals that it carries with it.
Text by Isidora Banjac, MA, curator
[1] Taken from Mladen Bundalo’s statement “Station 1/3-Space”
[2] Taken from Mladen Bundalo’s statement “Station 1/3-Space”