MARIN KANAJET

MINARETS
2008
collage, audio recording, intervention in public space

Mosque is the local nickname of the Meštrović pavillion (House of Artists Croatia) which keeps alive the memory of one part of its history. The building was transformed from an artists’ house into a mosque by the very order of the fascist government of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941. Architect Stjepan Planić was entrusted with building the minarets and adapting the surrounding area. The photographs from that time show how this reconstruction (a result of a politically and ideologically based decision, just like the subsequent one which transformed the building into the Museum of Revolution) was performed with such care and attention to detail, especially regarding the building’s immediate environment. In its present unkempt state, among the bushes and billboards, the fountain and the benches are remnants of exactly this intervention. The minarets, built from the famous Brač stone, were demolished in 1948 and the debris was used in construction of roads in the city outskirts. The name Mosque, however, remained in popular usage to mark the location which has been the stage where a whole procession of people’s and less people-like heroes were glorified, mostly for a very short time. The square in which the building is situated has itself often changed names: King Peter I Great Liberator, the Kulin Ban Square, Victims of Fascism Square, Croatian Nobles Square… The Meštrović pavillion, Mosque, Museum of People’s Liberation and House of Artists Croatia have all been names that have been used side by side to designate the same building throughout its existence although they mark radically different functions and suggest radical political and social transformations during the 20th century. A different function regularly implies a thorough reshaping of the interior of the building, leaving the exterior for the most part unchanged. Naming - marking something with a name, functions as «owning» but is also a catalyst for change. Despite constant turbulences, in parallel with replacements of ideologies, there is the persistence of memory. Ephemerality of names/titles, «people in high places» and regimes together with the persistence of conflicting convictions and prejudices, merge in this site like barely anywhere else. The work in the exhibition examines how historical and political circumstances have influenced the transformations of the space/building and its function, as well as the effect these transformations have had on destinies of people who participated in the formation of the building and its metamorphoses through history. (M.K.)

MARIN KANAJET (1982, Split, HR) is in his final year of studies at the Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and Sociology.