Dragan Papić Dr. Agan

Born in 1952, in Serbia. Social activist & Multimedia artist, present on Belgrade art and cultural scene since the late 1970s and early 1980s – as one of its main protagonists (and chroniclers). Creator of "Dečak" (The Boy), initiator of ARA concerts & "vis movens", "Paket aranžman" (Package Arrangement). Today the only curator of UM, "Internal Museum," located in his flat, where, in a colourful scenery a large number of objects reside works of art which the author has collected/ accumulated over the years, the project "Idiot" ("A Deserter’s War Diary") through "Art–calendar" of the "Publikum" was realized. In 2004 he started "PLJUS" (Space for Love and Freedom), online list which in time grew into the uncensored debate club, where he as a moderator starts numerous debates on current social, cultural and political topics. "PLJUS" is subject to changes, and it has recently been given the form of a "pressure group". During the first half 1980s he had a large number of exhibitions at the Students’ Cultural Centre - SKC (which are mostly not very well documented), in "Cvijeta Zuzorić", MSU Salon, KC Belgrade, SC Zagreb, SKUC Ljubljana, CEDUS Sarajevo, Liverpool, Brescia etc. Part of the 47th, 44th and 42nd October Salon (as well as those held in 1981 & 1978) and Idea-not-realization exhibitions (Remont, Belgrade/ Požega City Gallery) "IKG"/Museum "25 May" etc. He won the prize at the 44th October Salon.

Naming his work for this year’s BELEF selection of the artistic billboards after the popular Beatles’ song "Hello Goodbye", the Belgrade artist Dragan Papić conceptualizes/verbalizes two different visual situations – sights of Serbian flags that are decorated with the blooming and over–blooming dandelion instead of national symbols.

Why dandelion? In the early 1990s a newspaper article about the discovery of the "mass burial sites" on the Pakrac plain makes a strong impression on the artist. By some bizarre decision of the Mother Nature, the dead were covered by vast fields of yellow dandelions. On one occasion, on the banks of the Ibar river (coincidentally, right next to a refugee camp which occupied the pre-war villas of Mataruška Banja), the artist makes photographs of dandelions; his shadow also remains recorded on the photo. Inevitable as consciousness, the shadow overlaps the photographed plant, which found its place in the artist’s heart, as well as the story about the golden fields of Pakrac. By the decision of coincidence or history, "Serbian" peonies are replaced by dandelions. Wishing to place this event and its consequences into the hearts and consciousness of others, too, Papić realizes an installation not long after, on 2001 October Salon, where he repeats the situation of the dandelion and the "shadow", making it possible for the visitors to find themselves in a position in which the yellow flowers become part of their emotions, questioning and memory of the place of death. With his new work, enlarged on the billboard, it is no longer possible to outshadow the dandelion. It is now there to cut the spectator’s view and shadow it by asking him numerous, old and new questions about the identity, about us being the "victims or criminals", about scattering, welcomes and goodbyes, about the birth, blooming, dying etc. but the work turns nostalgically towards the "better times" as well, memories of more innocent, less worrying days in our lives, when we saw dandelions as little suns, or sent their bracts into the world to make new life on some other fields by blowing at them.

And when the words of the Beatles’ song "Hello-Goodbye" did not mean anything to us. It seems that the hard times transfer their burden over to the seemingly meaningless memories as well.