SPEECH BY MS. TATJANA HOLJEVAC, PRESIDENT OF THE ZAGREB CITY ASSEMBLY

Excerpt of the keynote speech at the Vernissage of the exhibition on February 15, 2007 at 19:00
Venue: Zagreb City Hall, Zagreb, Svetih Cirila i Metoda 5, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia

Dear Ms Brandl,
Dear Mr Ebner, Cultural Attaché of the Austrian Cultural Forum,
Dear Mr Hinteregger, member of the Siemens Board,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is my special honour and pleasure to welcome you to the Kristofor Stankovic Gallery of the Zagreb City Assembly on the occasion of the opening of tonight’s exhibition. It is also my pleasure to welcome Dr Margit Brandl, our very distinguished, interesting and talented guest and respectable co-operator on telecommunications legislation issues, who has now proven to be equally successful in the artistic domain. I am convinced we express out mutual pleasure of having the opportunity to witness her artistic accomplishment and strengthen our friendship at this occasion.

The artist has arrived here with a somehow controversial reputation of an art photographer whose works, believe it or not, were partly censored in 2006. Some of the photographs might be bizarre but were definitely not offensive. Her main objects of interest at this exhibition are dummies. She attributes them the properties of muses, ancient Greek goddesses who encouraged and inspired arts, knowledge and the beauty of creativity. Now they look dead, rigid and rejected, and as if Margit Brandl wants to convey that we not longer live in a world of classical proportions between ideas and reality, but rather in a world where nothing valuable is lasting or it gets replaced. This may be, as she herself says, because dummies as models or paragons are not made by gods, but by people for the people. They can be endlessly multiplied, but nevertheless last only as long as they we need them.

Tonight we are certainly going to communicate with the world through the eyes of our artist whose exhibition has been sponsored, as usual, by a big company. We in Zagreb can notice that sponsoring of art exhibitions has improved recently. We are specially pleased today that this exhibition, which has also been supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum, is taking place just in the Kristofor Stankovic Gallery, a venue where the City Assembly of Zagreb has been hosting or successful presenting talented young artists. Tonight’s exhibition of Ms Margit Brandl’s work has a special significance among the exhibitions in this Gallery.

Back to Zagreb exhibition.