Massinissa Selmani | UGM | Group Exhibition

The exhibition No Looking Back, Okay? is an attempt to decipher if and how confrontations with manifold layers of memory – be it autobiographical, historical, collective, etc. – can alter our perception of present realities and offer a fresh start. Is memory – once exposed to processes of appropriation, re-enactment, analysis etc. – capable of critically affecting one’s understanding of oneself and of others; and if so, can it provide a new starting point for common ground? Is no looking back at some point an option?

We are looking to present a bold turn on remembering and de-constructing histories within contemporary art practices; practices confronting personal memories and conflicting histories through uncompromising, determinate actions. They often include wit, absurdity, reductionism and intense poetics, and they bear in their essence a form of resistance, revolt even, a will to undermine the conventional. No Looking Back, Okay? is about thinking how looking back can finally offer a new entry for us all.

The exhibition No Looking Back, Okay? is presenting works by some of today’s most interesting visual artists, who, among other, work intensively in the field of researching memories, constructing histories and the search for identity. On view will be large-scale installations, video works and projections, photography, drawings, paintings and performative interventions by more than 15 young and established visual artists from around Europe and beyond.

Exhibition with support from Goethe-Institut Ljubljana and Institut français de Slovénie.