Communities for art and culture launched a petition "Voice against the current selection for the representative of Serbia at the Biennale in Venice".
Let us remind you, according to the decision of the Commission He should represent Serbia painter Predrag Đaković with the project "Across Golgotha to Wax".
The initiators of the petition, "artists, cultural workers, art historians and other creators from the contemporary art scene in Serbia", strongly oppose and distance themselves from this decision of the Ministry of Culture, which they call controversial.
Unprofessional behavior
"We believe that the election of Predrag Đaković is the result of an unprofessional and non-transparent procedure by the Commission, which abused its authority, and not the result of evaluating contemporary artistic creativity and representativeness for the domestic and world cultural scene."
We challenge the work of the commission whose members are closely connected with the party in power, which qualified them for a series of public functions that they perform without professional integrity and elementary professional ethics."
Two members of the Commission stand out in particular, Jelena Medaković, until recently the director of the Museum of the City of Belgrade, and now the City Secretary for Culture of Belgrade, who was the commissioner of Serbia's performance at the 60th Biennale in Venice in 2024, and Marijana Kolarić, art historian, curator and acting director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade.
Commission
They believe that "at a time when the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade, for the second year in a row, canceled the public competition for co-financing of contemporary creativity, the person recently appointed to the position of Secretary for Culture, can hardly work in the interest of contemporary artists of the Republic of Serbia."
It can only act in the interest of the party in power, which clearly demonstrates devastating arbitrariness, usurpation of public institutions and resources for party interests, along with a series of questionable decisions and actions, as discussed by the current investigation of the Public Prosecutor's Office for organized crime."
They also believe that "the acting director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, an institution that has the obligation to advocate, protect and service the needs of the contemporary art scene in Serbia, did not make any public statement to support the disenfranchised and threatened artists of the Republic of Serbia in a year when the Ministry of Culture still did not announce the results of the competition for contemporary creativity in the field of visual arts."
It does not represent professional criteria or the interest of the contemporary art scene in the country, but only the interest of the ruling structures."
Unknown artist
From the moment it was announced that Predrag Đaković will represent Serbia at the Venice Art Biennale, the local public comments on that decision as a failure and emphasizes that no one in Serbia knows about Predrag Đaković, nor in the Czech Republic where he lives.
True, there is little information about him on the Internet.
Predrag Đaković was born in 1964, and has been living and working in Prague for decades, where he studied at the Academy of Arts. Serbia got to know him in 2018 thanks to the monograph "Peđa ephemeris of one drawing", published by the Institute of Culture of Vojvodina, the documentary film "Back to the roots" directed by Nenad Ognjenović, and an exhibition in Novi Sad - all on the occasion of thirty years of career. Last year, he exhibited in the Gallery of Matica Srpska, at the exhibition "Prayer as Mercy", where the works of Alfons Muha were also exhibited.
