Archaeology of the Modern (2025)

The Cultural Centre of Belgrade

Archaeology of the Modern – The Case of Hotel Jugoslavija and Other Psychographies presented three interconnected series by Bizumic: BARYTA (2017–), Hotel Jugoslavija (2011–2025), and UNESCO’s Children (2019–). The exhibition explored the site-sensitive relationship between image-making, diverse lens-based techniques, and the distinctive conditions created by the gallery’s large windows overlooking Republic Square, Belgrade.

At the core of Bizumic’s practice lies a deliberate refusal to settle on fixed positions. Instead, his work embraces a continuous, precise, and affirmative shifting of attention—an approach that opens new ways of seeing. Through both imagery and installation, this method conjures a paradoxical sensation of simultaneous expansion and contraction, inviting a deeper engagement with perception itself.

The BARYTA series examines the photographic medium itself, focusing on baryta paper, a key material in photographic printing. The images depict barite mineral samples from the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Bizumic questions the environmental consequences of so-called 'green' energy alternatives, such as lithium for batteries, highlighting the ecological issues often overlooked in narratives of progress.

The Hotel Jugoslavija series investigates the building's fate, first between 2011 and 2013, when it was removed from the list of protected cultural heritage sites, and later, from late 2024 to early 2025, as its demolition became imminent. The photo-collage work explores the decline of modernist ideals and the state’s dismissal of cultural memory, reflecting on the erosion of values such as collective progress.

UNESCO’s Children focuses on the vulnerability of photography and World Heritage sites. The images, hand-printed with the negative displayed alongside the print, challenge the conventional logic of photographic reproduction, emphasising the materiality of the medium.

The exhibition invites active viewer engagement, using techniques like coloured lighting, double exposure, and collage to highlight the complex interplay between the artwork and its politically and historically loaded location, resisting closure.