States of Place. States of Being. 

​

War leaves invisible wounds that are passed down from generation to generation, carried forward from the past to the present and on one into the future.  This new group exhibition entitled States of Place. States of Being. has been conceived in two parts that dialogue between the visible and the invisible, between the traces left by the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s on the territories, and those inscribed within bodies and memories.  

​

States of Place is conceived as a contemporary archaeology. It observes the visible and invisible traces left by the wars on the territories of the former Yugoslavia, in its urban and rural cities and landscapes. It explores how inhabitants today move within these spaces marked by history. Taking place in Marseille from 10th of January to 8th of February 2026 at Spazio. 

​

States of Being takes us into the unspeakable, into what persists within the human after devastation, beyond language. It evokes the invisible imprints of trauma, the ways in which they transform, are diverted, or settle into oneself, how everyday gestures become coping mechanisms. Taking place in Paris, dates and place to be confirmed.  

​

States of Place. States of Being. is a threshold space where the questions of what remains, how we endure and in which states can we survive in order to simply emerge from the nightmare and recognize the trauma. The exhibition invites a relationship to the past that goes beyond commemoration: The aim of this curatorial research is not to re-write history, but to understand how artistic practice can be used to process and digest collective trauma and digest collective and intergenerational trauma. This exhibition examines trauma is still living in the everyday life of people from the Balkans 24 years after the 1990s  wars ended. How the consequences of traumatic war experiences are being approached by the second generation that lacks the first-hand experience of the war but are still dealing with its impact without a language to describe it.  

​

In these times of crisis we have all become witnesses to ethnic cleansing and genocide, to environmental devastation, we all are helpless in the face of such madness and terror. This is the nightmare we must wake up from. How can we as a collective process these traumas and embrace our responsibility to the present and the future, not simply be victims of the past. How do we Embrace the Silence, Embrace the Past, and Embrace the Future. 

​

Emilia Trifunovic