Identification – Field exercises after Katalin Ladik

In 1975, the Yugoslav neo-avant-garde artist of Hungarian descent, Katalin Ladik, performed an action entitled Identification (Identifikacija) on the stairs of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The occasion of her visit to the Austrian capital was a group exhibition presenting Yugoslav avant-garde art, in which she figured as one member of the Vojvodinian Bosch+Bosch group (1969–1976). The documentation of the piece took the form of two photographs, the first one shows her standing in front of a long Yugoslav flag hanging from the first floor, above the stairs, leading to the entrance of the prestigious Viennese institution, the second one presents her behind the flag.

On an individual level, the action scanned layers of identification ranging from the citizen’s general status as political entity, through their relation to state power, institutional authority, a culture or a higher social class, especially the 19th century bourgeoisie, to their belonging to a political block in a Cold War situation. It also touched the politicization of the woman and her body as a biological, social entity and national property, or simply the condition of the artist as a woman in a highly patriarchal system. On a broader scale, the piece forecasts how societies of the (not only post-communist) Eastern Bloc countries shape their contemporary identity, relate and identify with their past and/or present in the luring light of Western Europe and the European Union.

Taking as a starting point Katalin Ladik's piece, the exhibition explores different narratives, contexts and practices of identification through the work of six contemporary women artists from Central-Eastern Europe.