ARTISTS TALKING

Stills, Edinburgh
16 January – 14 March

Stills gallery's latest exhibition 'New Europe and the Balkans' feels alive with Dragana Zarevac's wailing video art dominating the gallery space, Vladimir Nikolic's dance track, and an ever-changing programme of Balkan video art. Even the photographic prints that make up the vast majority of the show are deep in dialogue with each other about modern Balkan life.

The seven contemporary artists from Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia grapple with their new identities, throwing off cultural stereotypes with a wry humour that should find a friendly audience in Scotland. Zarevac's video features a woman chanting wordlessly to a deep droning sound, an intensely authentic piece of Balkan heritage, you think. Until, that is, the camera pulls out revealing her male companion hoovering their modern living-room in synch with the singing. Mladen Stilinovic takes issue with the Balkans' reputation for death and suffering, documenting in seven black and white photographs the ritual burial of three old mattresses bearing the word 'bol' (pain). Opposite, Igor Grubic shows himself and his girlfriend dressed in modern bath towels, cycling shorts and sandals as quasi-Biblical refugees, addressing notions of historical identity from an uncompromisingly modern perspective.

The captions are a little too eager to offer interpretation, but their most loaded contribution is in the artists' biographical information: Vladimir Martek is 'born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia/Lives in Zagreb, Croatia' while others are 'born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia/Lives in Belgrade, Serbia'.

This fracturing of identity coupled with globalisation, not to mention the implications of European enlargement, create a range of cultural questions which seem to bother us as an outside audience more than it bothers the artists, who already know who they are. Though at times rehearsing existing artistic formulae, the artists assert their modernity with a fresh wit and direct appeal that cannot fail to capture our attention.

Catriona Black

Catriona Black is an animator, and art critic for the Sunday Herald.

www.artandphilosophy.com