Staged Salvations explores the idea of rituals used as an attempt to overcome the reality that has suddenly become a burden. Our very fragility transforms itself in the productive force that enables separation from the previously practiced patterns. Twisting common modes of perception becomes possible thanks to newly found tactics that can easily disrupt the human mind. Previous belief systems can be replaced with new meanings derived from altered experiences that may provide security and optimism. A collective that shares this experience can develop into a community that strengthens each individual’s sense of belonging. In this view, rituals can be both spiritual and profane, emerging from the interplay between the external and internal world. Elements of material culture are turned into symbols and creative tools used in performance-like actions that initiate different ways of self-reflection within various communities enabling catharsis and fulfillment. In the quest for self-actualization and self-improvement the body is a primary medium through which a new level of consciousness becomes possible.

André Viking, Rocco Venezia and Nils Stelte capture such embodiments of individual and collective rituals in the forms of symbols, gestures, expressions, and rhythms. Their work reveals a universal quality in these embodied patterns communicated through performative actions. Rather than depicting clear, linear narratives, these artists introduce incomplete fragments, expressing the liminal quality of rituals in which reality questions itself. Depicted objects and characters can be a part of staged experience or spontaneous and improvised actions that may seem fantastic and dreamlike but are still deeply rooted in common human reality. Performativity emphasized through photography is used as a way to understand the non-physical dimension of the body. The work of all three artists anticipates change and comes from the vulnerable position derived from personal experience.

In Kekulé’s Dream, André Viking explores the holistic practices of African shamanistic healers called sangomas. The work is a result of his trips to the Free State province of South Africa and a visit to The Cave of Fertility where sangomas have lived for centuries. In their healing tactics they tend to unite mind and body, focusing equally on physical and mental health. Slowly integrating with the community, Viking himself engaged in ritualistic practices that use dreams as the main channel of communication.

 Through dreams, healers are able to communicate with their ancestors who guide them to a state of trance where an unbounded spiritual self comes to life. In return, dreams create a new basis for interaction with everyday life, free from the meanings and interpretations that are often imposed on us.

A similar connection with mind and body can be found in the work of Nils Stelte. Renaissance is a series of photographs that consider different tactics used by urbanities undergoing a personal crisis, enabling individual growth through the practice of mind-body medicine and the rejection of prescribed knowledge, to emphasize alternative healing practices that question the Western separation of human spiritual and physical dimensions. Laughter yoga, zen archery, hypnosis and aikido are among different strategies Stelte has captured. Dramatic effect is built upon duality of equally present scientific and alternative symbolism.

The receptive quality of symbols, objects and gestures is also visible in the dreamlike scenes from the Mediterranean area represented in the work of Rocco Venezia. In the series Is Life Under The Sun Not Just A Dream materiality reveals its spiritual dimension. Within the context of southern European realities, marked by cultural and economic crisis, disruption is a source of creative potential. Arbitrary compositions emerge as sculptures or ambiguous objects waiting for meanings to be inscribed. Drawn out of the tradition of Arte povera and metaphysical painting, Venzia manages to build a mysterious scenery in which time has stopped and silence becomes almost tangible.

The everyday pressures of practical and economic needs demand control of the idea of the self as a stable entity. The world we live in is constructed on rational patterns we perceive as our own personal truths, yet each self is only the embodiment of the culture that surrounds it. Outside influences and new information make us the product of constant change, in a world in which individual autonomy exists only as fiction. In the current social and political climate, marked by tensions and transformations, we can break under this rational world. Loss of meaning makes us seek an alternative, because there is no stable self we can come back to.

Artists

ANDRÉ VIKING

ROCCO VENEZIA

NILS STELTE

Curator

LOVRO JAPUNDŽIĆ