Württ. Kunstverein Stuttgart : Konjic

Württ. Kunstverein Stuttgart: Titos Bunker

The point of departure for this exhibition, on show at the Württembergischer Kunstverein from May 27 to August 6, 2017, is a particular place, Tito’s bunker in Konjic (Bosnia and Herzegovina), which is equally negotiated as concrete location and as open-ended metaphor.

From 1953 to 1979, the former head of state in Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, initiated the top-secret construction of a gigantic and—at least theoretically—nuclear-safe bunker in Konjic, a town situated around 40 kilometers south of Sarajevo (and today located in Bosnia and Herzegovina). This shelter, drilled 300 meters deep into the mountain and occupying a space of 6,500 square meters, was conceived for the survival of 350 chosen representatives of the country’s political and military elite of that time—including just one woman: Jovanka B. Broz, Tito’s wife. Tito himself outlived the accomplishment of the structure by just one year.
Not until the 1990s did the existence of this construction project, which cost 4.6 billion US dollars, become public knowledge. At this time, still no global atomic war had happened, fortunately, but the nation (or more precisely: its “elites”) that was (were) to be rescued in this bunker had disappeared: it was quasi atomized.

In 2011, the two artists Edo und Sandra Hozic succeed in launching the Project Biennial D-0 ARK, whose site was to be Tito’s Bunker. From the very beginning, their aim has been to amass a collection of art through the biennial that would ultimately serve as a basis for a museum in the bunker.

http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de/typo3temp/pics/1746ddbd1e.png

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