Nermin Duraković: Northern Insularity
Monday, June 15, 2015 at 8:00 p.m.

“The author expresses his view on current policies practiced by modern Western democracies, where the concept of asylum rests upon political correctness which is insincere and without conviction, which disregards the needs for socialization of new members of the community. Instead of receiving equal, normal, better living conditions, they remain isolated, with their suitcases full of old fears and new insecurities. Hence the word insularity and its connotations of extreme isolation, seen in this sense as excommunication.”
from Jeppe Wedel – Brandt’s text

The word insularity* is a synonym for ignorance of other cultures, ideas or people outside one’s own experience. It is also a synonym for the isolated state of an island. Insularity is a very suitable word to describe the kind of human ignorance that manifests itself on a structural, institutional and personal level, and which is present in societies in the Northern part of Europe today – but which is by no means limited to the Northern European societies. This kind of human insularity, more precisely the socio-political state of things in Denmark, has been the point of interest in visual artist Nermin Duraković’s art production over the past ten years. In his art practice he is concerned with the spaces, the physical settings and mental states which are part of life for people seeking a new life in Denmark. The art works presented at the exhibition “Northern insularity”, comprised of installations combined with video, animation and sound, give shape to imbalances and states of being which are not part of the public tales or given much airtime in the media, but which are omnipresent at all levels in the Danish society.
The exhibition communicates real layers of what Danish cultural historian Jeppe Wedel- Brandt describes as “a history of nationalism and human debasement”.

*insularity| ˌɪnsjʊˈlarɪti | noun [ mass noun ]
1 ignorance of or lack of interest in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one’s own experience: an example of British insularity.
• lack of contact with other people: the stifling insularity of the children’s existence.
2 the state or condition of being an island. he proved the insularity of Van Diemen’s Land by circumnavigating it in 1798.

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Nermin Duraković (1979) is a visual artist, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is born in the Former Yugoslavia, today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2005 he graduated at the Funen Academy of Fine Arts (Denmark) and has exhibited at museums and galleries in Denmark and abroad. Next to his work production he has initiated several social initiatives with a socio-political and cultural mobilising agenda.

www.nermindurakovic.com | www.socialcontext.eu

The exhibition is organised with help and in collaboration with the author and MMSU – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka