Name: Gabrijel Savic Ra
Country Of Origin: Serbia
Country Now Residing: Serbia
Title: Displaced Innocence
Living in Serbia during the nineties war influenced me on several levels: socially (left without some friends), sociologically (the society in which I lived before turned into society where is hard to live, literally and metaphorically), physiologically (you call yourself a normal person and you don’t know anymore what’s normal) and intellectually (my awareness of a situation and position where you can not change a thing). Now, after political changes (if you could call them that) at least it’s not war, but the basic situation stayed the same. So, if I’m talking about the displacement I can not avoid to talk about certain changes of the place where I live. To choose to go and live somewhere else is an easy way out. Even if I go somewhere else to live, there’s still this burden that I will carry with me, so if I want to face displacement, it has to be first here, where I am (Serbia) in a way where I will feel free. This means that through intellectual progression I have to resolve certain issues concerning the situation we are all left in after the war. Once, Marina Abramovic, said that the first time when she left Belgrade, she didn’t know how to deal with the freedom she had over there. That’s a main point, if you want to face displacement, it has to be first within yourself, then everything else is not such a big problem or at least it might appear that way.
The photo “Displaced Innocence” shows one of the buildings ruined during 1999 bombarding of Belgrade and four hands (my hands) with bloody crosses. This photo of my hands is from the performance I did where I was cutting the palm of my hands with a cross that had a razorblade on one side (one interpretation is how much pain and blood was has spilt from the war in former Yugoslavia). All together (ruined building and bloody hands) in this image are showing loss of innocence of my generation and our wish to put all of that behind us and reposition ourselves, if nothing else to renew the innocence we have lost.
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