In the decade since the fall of Milošević, Serbian artists and curators have mounted a rich critique of the changes that have accompanied the country’s recent political transition. Claiming the legacy of the conceptual art movements that had free rein under Tito, and deeply aware of developments in the international contemporary art scene, visual art in Serbia has represented a strong critical voice that has articulated the shift from common state to nation state, the increasing privatisation, the country’s contradictory relationship with the neighbouring EU. Ironically, despite the country’s increasing openness and prosperity, today Serbian art can rely on fewer structures of support than under Socialism and even under Milošević.

After the collapse of the Milošević regime Serbian artists hoped that along with so-called political and economic ‘normalisation’, an art system with buyers and institutions like in the West would materialise, curator Branislav Dimitrijević explains. Dimitrijević was co-author of the exhibition ‘On Normality’, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade in 2005, which offered a critical review of the Serbian art scene at the turn of the millenium. Under Milošević, the public art institutions were tightly controlled in favour of an ethnic-nationalist agenda. However, an alternative scene flourished, sustained in part by the financial support of the philanthropist George Soros’s non-governmental Open Fund for Democracy.

‘On Normality’ argued that an adherence to the ‘religion of normality’ was wide-spread amongst the citizens opposed to Milošević once his end seemed inevitable: the faith in an ideal of social harmony synonymous with economic liberalism. A group of theorists that congregated around the School of Art History and Theory (1999-2002), of which Dimitrijević was a co-founder, and then around the journal Prelom (2001-), problematised the ideal of a harmonious society without antagonisms as a neoliberal, pan-capitalist illusion.

In his essay ‘The post-Yugoslavian Condition of Institutional Critique’, the philosopher Boris Buden, who was also involved in the School of Art History and Theory, argues that in the post-Communist discourse, the process of transition towards liberal democracy has been portrayed as a process of normalisation. The West, according to this reading of history, is the embodiment of the historical standard, and what is wrong with the institutions in the East is that they are not yet Western. Artists and curators in Serbia have been persistent in offering alternative readings of the recent political changes in their country.

A video entitled ‘Partisan Songspiel. Belgrade Story’ (2009) by the Russian collective Chto Delat articulates the situation of Serbia today in relation to its Communist past. In what is set up like a Greek tragedy inside an industrial ruin, a group representing the ruling class of politicians and industrialists, clad in the dark suits and shades of Mafiosi, invoke their embrace of the EU, of foreign investment, of progress. Below them, a foursome representing the weaker sections of Serbian society – a Roma refugee from Kosovo, a fingerless worker, a lesbian, a veteran of the 1990s wars – illustrate their plight. All the while, a choir of ‘dead Partisans’ calls on its children to form new ranks in the name of Communism. The suggestion that a serious engagement with the Socialist past is necessary permeates the humour of the piece.

The exhibition ‘Political practices of (Post-)Yugoslav art’, held at the Museum of the 25th of May in Belgrade in 2009, in which ‘Partisan Songspiel’ was shown, proposed new readings of the artistic scene and production of the socialist years as an inspiration for a new kind of politically engaged art: ‘transformative and emancipatory, not merely propagandist’. The exhibition was curated by Prelom’s Jelena Vesić with the collaboration of a host of pan-Yugoslav and international researchers, and presented new work alongside case studies from socialist Yugoslavia. The interconnectedness of official and alternative cultural actors in the 1970s and 80s was brought to light through the presentation of the activities of the Student Cultural Centre, among others. Founded and financed by the ministry of culture, the centre was conceived by the artists circulating around it as a self-organised place of learning and saw exchanges with international artists such as the UK collective Art & Language. The centre’s core group included all the significant Serbian artists of that generation, including Marina Abramović.

No comparable cultural policy as that which backed the Student Cultural Centre in the 1970s and 80s exists at the level of the state today. Branislava Andjelković, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, argues that the state’s lack of engagement in culture reflects a misguided fear that such an engagement might be perceived as ideologically tainted. Andjelković curated last year’s October Salon, which for the past fifty years has been Belgrade’s most visible artistic event, and is funded largely by the city of Belgrade. In an interview published in the Salon’s catalogue, Andjelković argued that through ‘deideologisation’, the public has become subservient to another logic, that of capital. What is missing for Adjelković is an open public space beyond the platforms granted for the celebration of sports and other types of spectacle, a space for the formation of political consciousness.

This absence is sorely felt in Belgrade, where both the National Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art have been closed for refurbishment since 2003 and 2007, respectively. While these shortcomings can be traced back to the lack of a clear political cultural agenda the situation has been exacerbated by the virtual non-existence, until recently, of serious private investment in the arts. As critic Saša Janjić suggests, a vicious circle is at work whereby the low visibility of the arts means that the state and private investors do not see it as a worthwhile area for sponsorship.

A big step forward was made in 2007, when the Norwegian telecommunications firm Telenor began setting up a collection of art made since 2000, combining very young artists with more established ones. The collection has been shown at various public venues around Serbia, in accordance with the company’s explicit aim to decentralise culture in Serbia. Kjell-Morten Johnsen, CEO of Telenor in Serbia is quoted on the company’s website saying he hopes that the Telenor collection will be ‘an invitation for other companies to provide help in development of the art market in this country’.

Darka Radosavljević, founder of the independent art association Remont, served as an advisor for the establishment of the Telenor collection. While in her writings, Radosavljević laments a turn to ‘management art’ since the late 1990s in Serbia, with artists applying marketing principles to their work, she welcomes the interest of Telenor. Although Telenor’s efforts in the field of contemporary art also belong to a marketing strategy, they represent a bold move in an area of activity that is rather marginal in the local public consciousness.

If Serbian artists have become more calculating in formulating clear themes and thinking in terms of target groups, as Radosavljević argues, this has been a side-effect of their search for a place on the global scene. At the 2009 Venice Biennale, Katerina Zdjelar, who lives in Rotterdam, showed a work which reflected on the role of language as a vehicle for intercultural communication. In the video, entitled ‘There is no is’, the artist tries in vain to teach a Japanese woman to correctly pronounce her name. Zdjelar cleverly presented the globe-trotting visitors to the Biennale with a situation they will have easily identified with. Importantly, Zdjelar affirmed Serbian cultural identity as one of the many centres of our polycentric world worth engaging with.

Fortunately, over the course of the past decade Serbia has not just exported artists but increasingly attracted artists and curators from abroad. Real Presence, an annual international workshop for art students founded by Student Cultural Centre veteran Biljana Tomić celebrated its 10th anniversary in September and has already attracted hundreds of students from all over the world. The October Salon has gone international, with a non-Serbian curator being appointed every other year. This year, Johan Pousette and Celia Prado from Sweden are mounting the exhibition, which will address questions of the mediation of history. The complex network of the Serbian contemporary art scene, of which Belgrade is only one site, has provided a key critical platform for the analysis of political change in Serbia and beyond. It is to be hoped that it will obtain the institutional support it deserves.