Graduation works by former students of the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts were chosen as a starting point of the project Case Study: the Academy. All the selected works were, at the time, marked as problematic in one way or another or they can at least be considered precedents that function as small shifts or disturbances within the expected or established models of studying at the Academy, as well as in the general perception of the Academy as an educational institution. The exhibition doesn’t offer one-dimensional perception or judgment, but instead, points to the complexity and urgency of the need to question the existing education models and to create new ones, not only at art academies, but also in the field of education and mediation of contemporary art in general.

Each of the works presented in the exhibition tells and individual “story”: in some cases students had to defend their graduation works and theses several times, modifying them or making them more “accessible” for mentors and the jury; others, on the contrary, have passed through the whole process without a single obstacle, in spite of the provocativeness of their chosen subject and the use of unconventional media; some works were rejected already at the level of the proposal and are still waiting for the next graduation term. What all of them have in common is that their provocative aspects abided not so much in the subject itself, but in their incompatibility with the Academy teaching, in other words for their lack of “visuality” or “fine-art-ness”.

By reactualising some of these works, the project tries to uncover the reasons why the Academy has considered them to be problematic or at least questionable and what has made the final phases of education and entrance of some of the students into the contemporary art scene into “cases” which were discussed in the intern circles of the scene, even if some of them have been, in the process of oral transmission exaggerated and have become partly fictitious. Together with moving on the unsafe ground of turning unofficial and gossip-like information into the starting point, the provocative aspect of the project is also in transforming the internal into the public and the unofficial into the official. By turning the art works into individual cases which point to more general principles and by offering additional documentation and interviews with their authors, the exhibition tries to raise the question of adequacy and contemporariness of the education models at local higher-education art institution to a public level, in other words, to identify it as a problem that demands a public discussion. The interesting fact is that some of presented works deal with the Academy’s education system itself.
The question ”What does the Academy find problematic?” therefore turns into the question “What is problematic at the Academy?”
The second part of the project, which starts after the exhibition closing, is going to engage students who are now students at the Academy. In the next three months, through workshops, meetings and discussions on the previously mentioned issues from the perspective of current Academy students, ideas for the project continuation will be formulated and ways in which this issues will continue to be addressed is going to be defined. One of the final project results will be a Guide for Academy’s Freshmen (and Professors’), which will, through the appropriation of the student guide form, present key themes and propositions, positive and negative aspects of the studying on the Academy as well as the project development itself.

Curators: Ivana Bago and Jasna Jakšić

The exhibition is open from 10-20 September 2008. After the exhibition, the project continues in the form of workshops, discussions and a publication, in cooperation with students of the Zagreb Academy of Fine Art.