Spiritual Decolonization

Духовна Деколонизација (Spiritual Decolonization) is a filmic assemblage, which centers on the lecture “Women, Development and the Non-Aligned Movement” given by the Yugoslav partisan, politician, and feminist Vida Tomšič in New Delhi in 1985. The film reflects on the friendship between Tomšič and Vina Mazumdar, an Indian grassroot feminist activist and pioneer of women’s studies. The setting of the lecture is in the Gallery of Art of the Non-Aligned Countries in Podgorica (formerly Titograd) in Montenegro, which has been maintained and kept alive since the 1980s by four exceptional art workers. The historical encounter between Vida Tomšič and Vina Mazumdar is intervowen with their knowledge about the collection as well as the legacy of the non-aligned cultural politics. Conceived as part of an installation for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022, the film was originally shown together with a series of drawings and sculptures, an homage to the few women from Yugoslavia who took part in the non-aligned exhibitions.

The project Духовна Деколонизација (Spiritual Decolonization) proposes to recontextualize the non-aligned movement from a feminist point of view. The concept of non-alignment, a political and cultural refusal to align to normative models, especially the division of the world in two blocs, was embraced by the international women’s movement in the 1980s as a framework for political and cultural change. Decolonization and anti-fascism were the main concepts which signified solidarity across non-aligned countries and helped to develop a ‘third way’ as an ethical position. At the same time, culture and art played a great role, in the non-aligned movement. The acknowledgment of cultural equality and the claim of a cultural heritage different from the approach of classical modernity were strong principles from the beginning. Духовна Деколонизација (Spiritual Decolonization) is mentioned as a goal in the founding documents of the Gallery of Art of the Non-Aligned Countries in 1984.

Program

Духовна Деколонизација (Spiritual Decolonization), 2022, 45 Min.

Introduced by Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, followed by a conversation between the artist and Bettina Brunner (curator, mumok cinema)

Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* is an artist, researcher, and writer. She is interested in queerness, displays of global capital, coloniality and the East, forms of escape, early psychoanalysis as well as politics of memory and war. Recent solo exhibitions include Active Intolerance at Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2023 and Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* at Kunsthalle Wien, 2021. The catalogue Contemporary / Unconscious based on her exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien was published by Sternberg Press in 2023. She is currently Professor for Artistic Research at Mozarteum University, Salzburg.