The west island

The exhibition setting is of crucial importance in the work of Lidija Delić in order to complete the conceptual presentation of her individual works. As in her previous shows, the works in this exhibition are complete only when set in the space itself and when specific relations are established between them. The Súgandisey Island Lighthouse piece is positioned so that its light and sound signals enable boat navigation on The West Island video, in the same way as this happens in reality. Lidija transforms the gallery space to create a complete ambience, so that the audience can experience this Icelandic landscape through pulsing sounds, room temperature and a cold blue light that is only paused and disrupted at certain intervals.

The form of the video itself requires an extended duration viewing. On the one side, light that changes at even intervals, illuminating the entire environment with different colors, accompanied by the ubiquitous repetitive sound of the lighthouse signalling device, and on the other, the ship that slows down into the harbor, further captures the audience by  creating a seductive, almost hypnotic atmosphere. The equal intervals at which sound and light are emitted, synchronized with the pattern of the rotating captions in the other space, create periodic movements that are perceived as the rhythm of the exhibition. In this rhythm, the emphasis is on the interval, which is the time between two sounds or the light, indicating the gap itself, the void, as the accent. In this way, the whole setting seems to disappear and reappear every three seconds.

On the surface, these landscapes seem only to recreate the atmosphere of a specific geographic point. However, they actually convey the artist’s experiences and feelings which are on the edge of real and imaginary to the audience. Icelandic marine landscapes serve as a starting point for artistic research that aims to transfer the artist’s inner processes to the gallery space and to create an atmosphere of displaced reality that has the ability to transport the audience into another reality by putting them at the centre of the relations that are the experiential core of the exhibition.

Sanda Kalebić