Archaeology of the Modern – The Case of Hotel Jugoslavija and Other Psychographies

“Mladen Bizumic: Archaeology of the Modern–The Case of Hotel Jugoslavija and Other Psychographies” uniquely activates the Artget Gallery space on the first floor of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade. The artist engages with the gallery’s location, oriented towards Republic Square, envisioning it as a public site where urban architecture, photography, and the viewer’s presence intersect. Across three distinct series BARYTA (2017–), Hotel Jugoslavija (2011–2025), and UNESCO’s Children (2019–) Bizumić engages the image as a site for negotiating the artist’s role in relation to broader questions of environmental and social consciousness. Rather than offering resolution, the works stage a critical reflection on how artistic practice can register and respond to the complex entanglements of nature, society, and perception.

Bizumić’s practice emerges from an ongoing investigation into the conditions of image production, with a particular focus on the intersections between digital and analogue formats and the contexts in which images appear. His works often take shape as site- and time-specific installations, structured to respond to their environment and to engage viewers directly. Developed over long periods, his research returns to recurring motifs, allowing their meanings to shift and accumulate through repetition and reinterpretation.

The series titled BARYTA gestures towards a critical interrogation of the photographic medium itself, referencing baryta paper (one of the most historically significant materials in photographic printing). The works depict samples of barite, a barium-based mineral housed in the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Each image functions as a fragment of a planetary landscape, a visual index of the geological site from which the specimen was extracted. Bizumić draws attention to the paradoxes embedded in the promotion of so-called ‘green alternatives’ in energy production, such as lithium for batteries, exposing the environmental degradation and ecological blind spots often obscured within prevailing narratives of progress.

Bizumić’s engagement with the case of Hotel Jugoslavija unfolds across two distinct temporal moments: first, between 2011 and 2013, following the building’s removal from the register of protected cultural sites; and later, in 2024 to 2025, as its demolition became all but inevitable. What began as an inquiry into the potential futures of modernist heritage becomes, upon return, a critique of the state’s systematic disavowal of cultural memory. The work traces the physical decline of a landmark alongside the ideological deterioration of modernism’s core ideals—collective progress, social ambition, and faith in industrial and technological advancement.

In UNESCO’s Children (Miró, the Serra de Tramuntana) (2019), these concerns crystallise around the vulnerability of both photography as a medium and the World Heritage sites it depicts, which are recognised for their exceptional cultural or natural value. Each image is hand-printed, with the photographic negative displayed alongside the print within a single frame. The pairing of negative and print rejects photography’s usual logic of reproduction. It foregrounds the material conditions and means of photographic production.

“Archaeology of the Modern – The Case of Hotel Jugoslavija and Other Psychographies” insists on the viewer’s active involvement, disrupting passive modes of seeing. By reconfiguring the gallery space and employing techniques such as double exposure, collage, and mixed media, Bizumić exposes the layered tensions between memory, materiality, and modernity. The works resist closure, prompting meaning to emerge through the viewer’s engagement with both the artwork and its location. This lends the exhibition a distinct site-sensitive quality.