Igor Grubić: Gestures of Activation – Works in Public Space
Igor Grubić: Gestures of Activation – Works in Public Space
4 September–3 October 2026
MMC KIBLA/KiBela
You are cordially invited to the opening of Igor Grubić's large solo exhibition, Gestures of Activation – Works in Public Space, which will take place on Friday, 4 September 2026, at 7 p.m. at KiBela, space for art.
INVITATION (PDF)
Renowned Croatian artist Igor Grubić, under the title Gestures of Activation – Works in Public Space, presents a retrospective overview of the artist’s multimedia creativity spanning the period from the late 1990s until today. It includes around twenty works of a broad range of formats, from minimal gestures such as text, photography or performance, to projects aiming at goals beyond art.
Public engagement is one of the fundamental stimuli of Grubić’s work, as underlined in the title of his first retrospective solo exhibition in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka, Croatia, then the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, Macedonia and now the Multimedia Center KIBLA in Maribor, Slovenia. He is preoccupied with the subject of social turmoil in the nineties of the 20th century, paying special attention to the processes of transition and privatisation, the burden of wartime destruction, and the responsibility of individuals in active social changemaking. His critically directed considerations are thus closely related to empowering civil disobedience, the implementation of different activist strategies of agitation and infiltration into the public space.
Penetrating the soft tissue of pacifist yet unnerving critique, Grubić represents a peculiar example of artistic activism relying on the spirit of guerrilla-anarchist actions, in the wake of the legacies of historical avant-gardes and conceptual practices from the sixties and seventies of the 20th century, which stepped out into the streets to express institutional critique and desire for direct communication with the public.
Biography
Igor Grubić (Zagreb, 1969) has been active as a multimedia artist since the early 1990s. His work includes site-specific interventions in public space, photography and film. He represented Croatia at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019). Grubić’s public space interventions, as well as films, explore political situations in both the past and the present. Grubić’s critical, socio-politically engaged practice is characterized by long-term involvement and commitment to the issues he decides to address. From profound research on the fate of historical monuments and the collapse of industry, to examining the difficulties of minority communities, his projects are implemented over the course of several years of research and establishing special relationships.
The exhibition was created in collaboration with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka, Croatia.
< Igor Grubić: 366 Rituals of Liberation – Against Trash, photography, 2008
MMC KIBLA/KiBela, Ulica kneza Koclja 9, Maribor
Opening hours: Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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