Venus and someotherheroes
“Venus and someotherheroes” – a series of images of fictional identities.
The project begins with two questions: the search for individual identity and a country in search of
its identity.
North Macedonia, a new small state in the Balkans since 1991, with the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
The “Skopje 2014” project aims to create a new state identity and claims control over its history in
order to reformulate its narrative. The nationalist government under Gruevski launches an initiative
in defiance of Skopje’s existing development plans and covers buildings with new facades in a
neoclassical style. And littered the city with sculptures and monuments from history, mostly men,
especially warlike personalities, oversized and reminiscent of fake replicas in the style of Las
Vegas.
Venus and “someotherheroes”:
We make Venus appear in the city of Skopje, wanting to remind the inhabitants that it was the birth
of Venus that heralds a new age in Botticelli’s painting in her “floating delicacy” and stands for a
new political and social message, and that with her archetypes of a bygone era are recalled and
question the current image of the city and its superficial political and social message.
In the figures of today’s “heroes”, origins, whether Macedonian or Albanian, and the present day,
ethnicities and genders intermingle and call into question the postulate of ethnic “purity” and male
heroism. They counteract the omnipresent exaggerated figures and in turn lay claim to visibility and
being seen.
Media & About