This Is Not My World: Art and Public Space in Socialist Zagreb

A close-up history of the Yugoslav artists who broke down the boundaries between public and private

In the decades leading up to the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia, a collective of young artists based in Zagreb took to using the city’s public spaces as a platform for radical individual expression. This Is Not My World presents a detailed account of the Group of Six Authors and their circle in the prolific and experimental period from 1975 to 1985, highlighting the friction between public and private that underlied their innovative practices.

Looking to circumvent the rigid bureaucracy of official art institutions, this freewheeling group of conceptual artists and their peers brought artistic activities directly to an unwitting public by staging provocative performances, exhibiting artworks, and interacting with passersby on the streets. Exploring artworks such as Vlasta Delimar’s act of tying herself to a tree in a busy pedestrian area, Željko Jerman’s production of a giant banner declaring “Intimate Inscription” in the city’s central square, and Vlado Martek’s creation of an artwork on a seaside beach using women’s underwear, Adair Rounthwaite examines the work of these artists as a site of tension between the intimacy of artistic expression and the political structure of the public sphere under state socialism.

Whereas many histories of modern and contemporary art in formerly socialist countries tend to be dominated by discussions of ideology and resistance, This Is Not My World focuses its attention on the affective aspects of the group’s activities, using artist interviews and extensive documentation to bring the reader closer to the felt experience of their public interventions. Situating the group’s work within the context of broader developments in conceptualism and theories of the avant-garde, Rounthwaite provides a fresh consideration and newly detailed account of this marginalized episode in global art history.