Dejan Jankov (Novi Sad/Serbia)

The use of recyclable materials in art is intended to show how something thrown away can be given a new life and a new use through a good idea, making people think about the duration and preservation of, and the attitude towards the monuments of architectural heritage. With that in mind, for this year’s Gradić Fest Scenatoria has prepared project “Triglav”, a monumental sculpture in the making, partly made from recycled plastic waste, and its author is Dejan Jankov.

The basic idea of this project is the creation of a monumental sculpture in public space, which is linked to the performance “Triglav” by group OHO, performed in 1968 in Ljubljana, and later in Novi Sad with the help of group KOD. Unlike the “live” sculpture that these artists made with their bodies, this monumental sculpture will be made from plastic waste. That gesture should evoke and engage memories of groups OHO, KOD, Bosch+Bosch, Januar i februar, and other artists gathered around Tribina mladih from Novi Sad. This monumental sculpture can also be seen in the context of harsh criticism of party bureaucratism, conformism and irreconcilable political views, as well as in the context of the time of Yugoslavian bureaucratic crisis, which culminated with the rise of rigid nationalistic tendencies of the 1990s.

Dejan Jankov was born in 1975, and he did his graduate and master studies at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. Since 2007 he has been a member of Art klinika (now called Šok zadruga), and he has collaborated  on scenography for a number of theatre plays in SKC Fabrika and Pozorište mladih in Novi Sad. He has participated in various group exhibitions of visual art and he has won the prizes of the Academy of Arts for small format drawing and his work for the Arts Expo in the categories Architecture and Life-size Nudes.