EXHIBITION
DAMIR AVDAGIC:  PRIJENOS (OVERFØRING, TRANSMISSION)

Opening: Friday 9 February 2024
Exhibition: 10 February – 7 April 2024

The act of bearing witness is central to the work of Damir Avdagić, whose performative film works are testaments to microhistories of migration, familial relationships and diasporic experience set against the historical backdrop of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. In his new, large-scale presentation at UKS in 2024, Avdagić will document performances developed together with three families who immigrated to Norway in the early 1990s. Each constellation consists of a mother and her (now grown-up) child. While the former speaks a self-experienced testimony from either before, during or after the Yugoslav Wars, the latter is given the task of simultaneously translating this story. Thus, the story travels from the mother’s native language and into Norwegian, the language of the families’ country of exile. The resulting installation continues Avdagić’s interrogation into transgenerational transmission, and questions what responsibilities younger generations have towards those who came before.

Damir Avdagić (b. 1987, BA) lives and works in Oslo. Avdagić is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Recent solo exhibitions and screenings include Projekti u dijalogu – Prosjekter i dialog at Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter, Svolvær (2023), Repriza/Uzvracanje (Reprise/Response) at 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica (2020) and To prosjekter i samtale at Oppland Kunstsenter, Lillehammer (2020). His work has been shown at KRAK – Center for Contemporary Culture, Bihac (2021), Kunsthall Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2019) and Kristiansand Kunsthall, Kristiansand (2018).

 

*Image: Still from test filming of Damir Avdagić, Prijenos (Overføring), 2024.