DRAGO TRUMBETAŠ AND HIS WORLD

ARCHIPELAGO GASTARBEITER

RING GALLERY

03/02/2010 -03/28/2010

HDLU, TRG ŽRTAVA FAŠIZMA bb

CURATOR: NENAD POPOVIĆ

Archipelago Gastarbeiter includes exhibition and the side events like literary evenings, panel discussions and the film screenings. The exhibition consists of 120, 70 x 50 cm large panels that combine famous Trumbetas’s drawings with photo documentation, newspaper clips, various administrative documents, working permits spanning from 1968 to 1985 and altogether outlining peculiar conditions of being a gastarbeiter - an immigrant worker in the Germany of that era. The panels vividly depict all the sources of Trumbetas’s inspiration and, simultaneously, to the viewer they present valuable referential data. Exhibition also features reconstruction of Trumbetas’s emigrant room including original furniture, memorabilia, personal objects and clothes he has saved, brought back to Croatia and stored in his home in Velika Mlaka, Zagreb’s a satellite settlement..  

The exhibition is a realization of the author’s longtime wish for the integral presentation and critical valorization of what was up to this moment considered to be merely research materials and didactic documentation.  With intention to maintain the accurate proportion of subjectivity and objectivity, Trumbetas has accomplished to map the gastarbeiter life itself, the social significance of the gasterbeiter phenomena, but also the humorous atmosphere that describes the 1968 - 1985 Germany as seen through the eyes of the immigrant workers. This self-taught author from the Zagreb’s periphery is thus aligned with the most veritable contemporary multimedia artists. The current art practice with its obligatory references to the social surrounding, appropriation of the mass–media material, exploitation of the personal history, writing a diary, organization and interpretation of the data base, etc., in the Trumbetas’s 40 years old collages can find its justified spiritual forerunner.