ANDREJ ĐERKOVIĆ
Tabernacle / 2016
BARCELONA
LA HABANA
ISTANBUL
NÜRNBERG
PARIS
ZÜRICH
KYIV
TABERNACLE (lat. tabernaculum – eng. tent, shrine)
Just like in the liturgical consecution, photographed places in this lineup have notion of a tabernacles, the places of "prayer and worship" of modern society. In this series, the selected sites are taking Eucharistic role of the central places of meeting, prayer and worship in the cities that are centres of important social changes in the last century, cities who lived (through) different social movements whose terminology ends with the suffix "ism"... fascism, communism, terrorism, populism and finally, capitalism. These places, mostly central squares, were (are) used as a tabernacle for different ideologies and social systems that have dominated the modern history. Dual meaning of the word svetohranište (tabernacle on artist’s maternal language), denounces the amalgam between hraniti (to store) something sacred and hraniti se (idolatry) with the existence of a particular person or idea.
Tabernacle in religious iconography is a space where you keep consecrated sacramental bread, which serve as "food for the soul" or spiritual food. In contemporary social iconography and throughout history, this spiritual food was dressed in all kinds of uniforms and according to geographical and temporal belonging it dictated social systems that, independently of its doctrines or typologies of social movements, were always tragic.
This series of photographic triptych, shows squares as altars of intellection of social consciousness and ideologies, and with his iconoclastic directness and emptiness, it confronts them with the original psychology of the masses. With its critical review, photographs are examining human behaviour during convergence in these social systems.
First edition of this photographic series is donated to the Collection of Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Gallery Duplex 100m2, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, september 2016
