Gloves

“Installation and performance
Gloves, the work of three artists of different artistic sensibilities within the framework of contemporary Bosnian art, Nardina Zubanović, Nelisa Baždar and Ira Skopljak, is a synthesis of installation and performance, created on the occasion of the Sarajevo Winter Festival and is a reflection of its theme – Art of Touch. Touch has always had a healing power, the healing power of touch is contained in the concept of the work of the Gloves. The material used in the creation of the work are gloves that become media through which the contact between the public and the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina is transmitted. A rectangular composition composed of gloves of different sizes, colors and purposes is located on the outer wall of the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The wall faces the busy highway and thus provides a direct connection with the outside world and observers. The damaged half of the wall served the artists as a base for the glove installation. Consequently, the museum also becomes part of the artwork. Gloves are subjects, and the museum is the object over which the action is performed. Touch action. Touching the wall, the gloves touch the museum, symbolically heating it and covering the damage. They are placed as elements of the façade that build on the preserved half of the wall and symbolically represent the transition from good to bad, a gap that needs to be bridged in order for the museum’s healing recovery to have positive results. The gloves do not completely cover the devastated half of the wall, the damage remains visible and they are part of the Glove art complex. The uncoveredness of the entire wall damage is interpreted as incompleteness, the unfinishedness foretells the continuation, the continuation is connected to a new beginning, a new beginning to the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina which stagnates in time and space. A house without a fireplace and tenants is not a home, it becomes an empty object that gradually loses its function, pays tribute to time, loses its beauty and eventually becomes a house of transience and disappearance. If the museum does not have its visitors, its function disappears and isolates it in the zone of the forgotten world. The gloves used as the material for the creation of this work previously belonged to the citizens who, at the invitation of the artists, separated them and donated them for the purpose of creating the artistic work. Leather, rubber, cotton, winter, work, mining, dishwashing, kitchen, children’s, large, small gloves that in the history of mankind perform the function of protecting the human hand, after they became part of the work, their function changed the object over which it works protection. Gloves now symbolically protect, preserve, warm, arrange and visit the Historical Museum of BiH By donating their gloves and citizens have become part of the artwork. Different gloves represent different profiles of citizens who, united on the wall of the Historical Museum of BiH, symbolically help its preservation and preservation of culture. This paper basically carries the idea of ​​social engagement. Through the symbolism of the gloves, the artists try to influence and awaken the consciousness of the society which, in this time of cultural decadence and crisis of the identity of the society, stops caring for the guardians of the society’s past – museums. The definition of a museum, according to the International Organization of Museums and Museum Experts (ICOM), reads: The museum is a permanent, non-profit institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which collects, preserves, communicates, communicates and exhibits for study. education and entertainment. The History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been in the service of the society and its development since its founding on November 13, 1945, by the Law on the Establishment of the Museum of National Liberation in Sarajevo. Now is the time, as the Gloves study, for society to be at the service of the museum, to restore its importance and revive its spirit, and the museum will reciprocally pay its tribute to the attention of all parts of society and help society and its development. Winter, children’s, torn, preserved, worn, used, new, old, working, kitchen, fashion gloves carry the message that it is necessary to engage in order for both the museum and society to survive. By involving citizens in the creation of the work, the artists have already taken a step in the engagement of society in order to preserve and protect the museum. The performance Gloves, independent of the installation on the outer wall of the History Museum of BiH, was performed by the artists on the opening day of the Sarajevo Winter, February 7, 2013. Upon entering the museum, the artists handed out rubber white doctor’s gloves, which were stamped with the seal of the museum from the time of the People’s Liberation Struggle. Doctor’s white rubber gloves are a symbol of healing. Visitors, that is observers, co-actors of the performance become doctors of the museum and take on the responsibility of taking care of the home of our past and heroes. By stamping the seal from the time of the People’s Liberation on gloves, a point of contact was achieved between the past of the great heroes and the present, which forgets about the heroes. “

Asija Ismailovski,
BA Art History

photo by Vanja Cerimagic