Tia Čiček
Abstract
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in the 1980s was crowded with collectives, organisations and individuals who fought for autonomous spaces in larger cities where they created thinking hubs brimming with creativity, comradeship and progressive exchange of thought. In Ljubljana, one such location existed at Staritrg 21, a space which the Student Cultural Centre (ŠKUC) acquired in 1978 and where the ŠKUC Gallery currently still operates as part of the same organisation. As various sections (visual art, music, publishing, etc.) operated at the same premises, exhibition-making itself was intertwined with various events and art forms, through which the people behind the ŠKUC also addressed current social issues. The following paper focuses on the work by artistic directors Barbara Borčić and Marina Gržinić during the years between 1982–1985. Gathering their intentions mainly through their writing and selected projects, we clearly see that as artistic directors they created a playground for younger generations to collectively create and produce multifarious forms of artistic expression rooted in social criticism, which is something we can surely learn from even today.
Tia Čiček has an MA in art history from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), where her master’s thesis included various archival works and was entitled The Professional Work of Ana Schiffrer in the Carniolan Provincial Museum (2019). For the last few years, she has worked as a curator and producer of contemporary art in various spaces such as the Centre for Urban Culture Kino Šiška and DobraVaga, and she is the current artistic director of Škuc Gallery (all in Ljubljana). In 2018 she attended a course at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg led by Ruth Noack and Grace Samboh entitled Thinking with Works of Art, and she recently finished the two-year curatorial programme at the World of Art School for Curatorial Practices and Critical Writing (SCCA, Ljubljana).
