Manca Bajec

As an artist, writer and researcher my interdisciplinary work concerns and is formed through the creation of a particular language which is employed to observe constructions of national histories and memories, politics. My practice is inspired by my work as a scenographer and curator, engaging with particular shifts in society. The work often interacts with a variety of fields of study and interweaves many mediums usually engaging through an appropriated form of theatricality. My doctoral work [described in further detail below] examines methods of public commemoration and structures of historical revisionism in post conflict areas, in doing so also instigating how culture and art are appropriated by nation states in order to form national identities and develop soft power. The thesis positions the state of the monument today, and more specifically in societies existing in a state of unresolved conflict. In doing so, questioning the artwork as a counter-monumental form and as an approach to unravelling issues of a resistance which exist in sites where monument-building is contested.

Currently, I am exploring how the nature of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's (SFRY) position as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the migration of its citizens, and the development of its diplomatic identities, has affected the current status of refugees and asylum seekers in the region.