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La Grande Galerie 03

2004

Danica Dakic

Photography

60 x 74 cm

For her photo series La Grande Galerie (2004), taken as part of the project, Danica Dakic engaged Roma from the refugee camp in Plementina to pose in front of a large-scale reproduction of the painting Imaginary View of the Grande Galerie in the Louvre as a Ruin by Hubert Robert (1733-1808). Dakic's work derives its aptness from confronting two different conceptions of ruin: in Hubert Robert's depiction of the Grande Galerie in the Louvre in Paris in picturesque decay, the museum is transported into a timeless realm, which transfigures his conception of culture into something awe-inspiring. In the photo people stand in front of this painting who have been reduced to living lives deprived of all rights, reduced to bare existence. Yet the way in which these Roma stand there and gaze at the observer reveals their dignity. Thus in a further sense this work is not only a critique of the politics of exclusion but also an expression of the fragility of human existence.
Danica Dakic
Bosnia
Born in 1962

Born in 1962 in Sarajevo.
Lives in Düsseldorf and Sarajevo.

Dakic studied at the Academy of Art in Sarajevo, the Academy of Art in Belgrade, and the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf. Danica Dakic's work investigates the interfaces of cultural and personal, and political and geographical identity. Using a variety of media (photography, film, video and sound installations), she interrogates the construction of identity and "home" that results from the impacts of social change, globalisation, and war, on the basis of her own experience of emigration. A recurring element is her insistence on the decisive importance of language, the spoken word, in the formation of identity.

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