Salon

Bojan Fajfric’s exhibition “December 5th 1978” has come to life through the research devoted to Boska department store – a modernist building in the centre of the city, built after the earthquake of 1969, which stood for decades as Banja Luka’s landmark. The building can thus be perceived as a symbol of time in which it came to be, and of Yugoslav self-management socialism, paradoxically embodied in a department store as a symbol of consumer society. This system is long since gone, the years of war and crisis are over, but Boska has remained unchanged, surprisingly how and in which details.

The “reconstruction” of Boska in the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Arts evokes not only the space and ambience of this edifice, but by creating a new space of collective memory and its inheritance suggests the continuity of fellowship formed in its collective.

With this evocative installation devoted to the reconstruction of memory of the micro-community of Boska department store, Bojan Fajfric seeks to explore the relationships between personal memories and general history. Besides documentary video recordings and photographs, the exhibition will also show the collage of photographs of Boska’s collective from 1978 to 2007, as well as the slideshow developed in collaboration with one of Boska’s longtime employees, Mustafa Ekic “Muki”, which represents an interpretation of certain pages from his scrapbook.

As chance would have it, right on the day before this exhibition will be opened, following the failed attempts to privatize this company, it is expected that the keys of Boska department store will be handed to its new, that is to say its first private owner.