Jasmina Cibic, Chronicler of Europe’s Identity Crisis, Wins Jarman Award

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Jasmina Cibic was awarded the 14^th Film London Jarman Award during a ceremony at Regent Street Cinema in London last night.

Born in 1979 in Ljublijana, Slovenia, back when it was still part of Yugoslavia, Cibic’s work has long grappled with the erosion of shared European ideals and the rise of xenophobic nationalism.

At the Venice Biennale in 2013, Cibic wallpapered the Slovenian pavilion with illustrations of Anophthalmus hitleri. The cave beetle, which is endemic to Slovenia, was named after Adolf Hitler in 1937.

In her 25-minute film The Gift (2021), an artist, a diplomat, and an engineer offer different proposals for a public offering that would help heal a divided society.

Cibic’s videos feature dialogue drawn from real political debates made more palatable by the inclusion of dancers and musicians, Cold War-chic outfits, and access to impressive political buildings such as Oscar Niemeyer’s French Communist Party Headquarters in Paris and the Palace of Nations in Geneva.

She became drawn to ‘identity crises of Europe, because that’s usually when culture gets called, to kind of try to fix something’, Cibic recently told The Guardian.

Cibic won the Jarman Award ahead of fellow nominees Adham Faramawy, Georgina Starr, Guy Oliver, Larry Achiampong, and Sophia Al-Maria.

‘The artists we selected are characterised by their audio-visual sophistication, their urgent narratives and the reflection they inspire on the nature of subjectivity, history and memory,’ said jurors Iwona Blazwick, Amal Khalaf, Shaminder Nahal, Larissa Sansour, and Tyrone Walker-Hebborn.

‘Altogether, these six artists represent an astonishing zeitgeist, a state of the art of moving image today,’ they said.

One film by each artist can be viewed on the Film London website until 25 November.

Artists previously shortlisted for the Jarman Award include Laure Prouvost, Monster Chetwynd, Duncan Campbell, James Richards, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, and Luke Fowler, all of whom also won or were shortlisted for the Turner Prize. —[O]

Main image: Jasmina Cibic, The Gift (2021) (still). Three channel 4K video. Courtesy of the artist.