ann lorraine schnake

D'Clinic Slovenia, May 2013 and American Embassy Serbia 2014-16

 

In working at the D'Clinic residency in Slovenia, preparing work for a show at the American Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia and making vists to my elderly relatives in Croatia, I was struggling with reconciling my personal narrative and other Serbian narratives, contempoarary and past. I landed on ideas of reinvention as a basic quality of immigration, and remembered when both San Francisco and Beograd/Yugoslavia shared ideas of utopian possibiliy. Basic wood elements, physical work, straight forward strong familial relationships, depicted in simple wood structures were also remniscent of my father, who was a wood worker.  At the opening of the exhibition, I created a dinner for the people of the town where we searched for words to attach to images, collectively dissecting ideas of re-invention and possibility.

 

From D"clinic the work traveled to Serbia for a 2 year exhibition at the American Embassy in Beograd, an extremely problematic site!