Ora, a voi preparare il discorso funebre per me (2019)

/from the series: The Face of Fascism

inkjet prints, acrylic, gesso 220 x 180 cm

including The Face of Fascism – Amerigo Dumini (2019)

embroidery, 64 x 48 cm

* The embroidery was produced by the artist and his partner, with the help of their friends.

Vienna is the city with contested cultural heritage: under the burden of traumatic political changes, the urban topologies have been transformed many times. As a part of Red Vienna’s city planning, a newly established Gemeinde Bau was named in honour of Italian socialist Giacomo Matteotti (1926) in order to celebrate the international antifashist solidarity. Matteotti, socialist politician, who gave a speech in the Italian Parliament denouncing faschist violence, was assassinated in a short while after it.

Contesting the complex problematics of heritagization – the process through which objects, practices and places are attached with values and transformed into heritage, artist Dejan Kaludjerović refers to this particular historical case in his newly produced artwork. Taking courage not to follow the method of monumentalisation, which often freeze the work of memory, Kaludjerović questions what might be the real face of faschism today. On the contrary, he creates the confrontational situation of looking straight into the eyes: black-and-white embroidered portrait of the unknown person appears to be the face of a faschist hitman and the leader of the group, who has kidnapped and killed Matteotti in 1924.

Presenting the embroidery that is done by the artist, his partner and friends, at the backdrop of red painted canvas, Kaludjerović examines the overwritten and blurred layers of history.

The canvas, plain red from the distance, appears to include pages from historical socialist proletarian press of the 1920s, reporting on fashist violence, as well as the notes of “Bella Ciao”, the song of struggle. Connecting the notions of populism, kitsch aesthetic forms and contemporary vortex of political ideologies, the artist invites to think about our own relation to the historical process, the position of a subject within it, as well as recurring forms of oppression and struggle.

*Excerpt from the text Dejan Kaludjerović – Ora, a voi preparare il discorso funebre per me (2019) by Aleksei Borisionok