Jasmina Cibic was born in Ljubljana in 1979. Her work revolves around the materialisations of ‘soft power’, specifically the political use of art and architecture as means to communicate ideals, values and narratives. She developed this capacity for the critical appropriation and subversion of narrative tools and iconography as a student, first at the Accademia Di Belle Arti in Venice (2003) and later at Goldsmiths, University of London (2004–2006), where she met her partner, photographer Pete Moss. In parallel to her studies, she founded the female collective Passaporta, which operated between Ljubljana, London, Grenada and Venice. She is currently based between London and Ljubljana.
Cibic accumulates, dissects, sorts and then overwrites cultural productions through a plethora of often-combined mediums. As a practitioner of ‘total art’, film, sculpture, performance and installation all serve her mission. By layering and superimposing symbols and stories, she falsifies narratives, shifts meanings and – as she herself states – decodes ‘the mechanisms of power while building her own allegorical structures’. By untangling the threads of past tapestries, her meta-critical methodology enlightens us on and warns us about the interwoven tapestries and networks that are currently being shaped, encouraging an analytical eye and a constant healthy perspective on history as it evolves.
Yugoslavia is a subject Cibic gladly makes use of as an example, warning tale and experimental terrain. Using archives and recreations, she has deconstructed the cultural identity and narrative of the now non-existent nation, specifically its use or ignorance of female figures and voices (sometimes literally in sung performances for example). She has mostly carried out this investigation in relation to the various universal exhibitions at which Yugoslavia was present (under different names): Barcelona (1929), Paris (1937), Brussels (1958) and Montréal (1967). Montréal is where Cibic recently presented the results of this artistic research.
Cibic’s participation in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 marked a turning point in her career, as it enabled her to present her work to the broader artistic community. Since then, she has curated ambitious, seminal international exhibitions, including the Pleasure of Expense (2019). Using the centennial of the founding of the League of Nations and the backdrop of Brexit-fuelled uncertainty, Cibic once again exposed political narratives through artistic dissections. She presented various films in the context of the show, including The Gift: Act II (2019), shot in Geneva’s Palace of Nations; Spielraum: Tear Down and Rebuild (2015); and State of Illusion (2018), again focused on Yugoslavia. Using all these moving parts, Cibic challenges and subverts the hegemonic cultural spectacle of State and Nation.
