Location: Belgrade
Date: 3-18.09.2020
Nebojša Yamasaki Vukelić’s exhibition “Inside everything will be soft and tender” explores the dichotomy between dystopia and nostalgia, with a focus on the New Belgrade blocks – residential buildings from the socialist period. The artist was inspired by a conversation with an architect who co-authored parts of the New Belgrade blocks and argued that despite their perceived “brutalism,” the buildings had soft and gentle interiors. This led Vukelić to consider the possibility of a future where everything is soft and gentle inside, even in buildings that are perceived as harsh and inorganic from the outside.
The artist’s use of the New Belgrade’s blocks serves as a metaphor for the contemporary mood, which is characterized by a mix of nostalgia for a past that never existed and dystopian fears of a future that seems increasingly bleak. The exhibition explores the tension between these two impulses and suggests that they feed off each other, with nostalgia fueling dystopia and vice versa.
Vukelić’s work also engages with the current political moment, which is marked by a collective paralysis of the political imagination. The artist suggests that the inability to imagine a positive transformation of social relations leads us to romanticize the idea of the coming disaster, as if the only way to achieve ideals like freedom and equality is through the extinction of the human species. This leads to a nostalgic attitude towards the past, which in turn makes it difficult to envision a future that is truly different from the present.
Through his exploration of the New Belgrade blocks, Vukelić challenges us to reconsider our assumptions about the past, present, and future. The exhibition invites us to imagine a future where everything is soft and gentle inside, even in the harshest and most inorganic of environments. By doing so, Vukelić suggests that we can break free from the collective paralysis of the political imagination and begin to envision a future that is truly transformative.
