Igor Grubic
East Side Stories
The installation East Side Story is based on events that took place in the streets of Belgrade in 2001 and Zagreb in 2002, during the Gay Pride demonstrations, where the participants were the victims of verbal and physical injury by neo-Nazi groups and other citizens. This work is composed of two projections: the first uses television images of the demonstrations while the second is the reconstitution of the events performed by dancers. This piece witnesses nationalism at work in society, aiming particularly at the “internal enemy that sexual minorities might represent”.
The use of performance and dance symbolizes creative freedom as well as the possibility to free the body from the public space. The performer’s body sends a signal in the public space in a society lacking social solidarity. This is a counter- monument or a monument of extreme fragility that reactivates repressed images. Aware that art produces hardly any political effects, Igor Grubic keeps on questioning the power of symbolic gestures. According to him this work, full of emotions and intensity, is an aesthetic act of resistance.