The Burden of the Past
A collection of narrative jewellery made with conventional techniques and tools, which describes the atmosphere and the daily life during communism as I witnessed and researched it.
I recreated the communist atmosphere, identifying few very specific elements, symbols of the daily life during communism, which are common and recognizable, present in most of the written or visual sources: the people, the queues for goods, the bags as permanent accessory, the buildings, the same grey apartment blocks all over Eastern Europe the people, in their most common hypostasis, randomly walking down streets carrying a bag, obsessed with finding some food.
Thirty years since Communism fell, people still play with Marx’s ideas, communism doesn’t look that bad for some, and we still carry the burden of the past. Our silence feeds the indifference and the ignorance.
Heavy, old, mended, darned, mostly empty, the grocery bags were an indispensable accessory, as you didn’t know when you might find food or soap or toilet paper, so you had to be prepared.
grocery bags
„For ordinary people living in Communist Eastern Europe during the Cold War era, a great part of everyday life consisted of searching and waiting for basic material goods… away from home each day for long stretches of time.” (Giustino, 2007). Inspired by a few existing photos but also by my memories, the people I draw and make are mostly old (the younger ones had to go to school or to work), they are carrying a bag and they have lots of clothes on (due the electricity and heat cuts, in the theatre hall or our own bed, we faced a permanent ruthless cold.
queue for food
No need to research the archives to find out how communist buildings looked like, people still live in those apartment blocks. They are the main features of most Eastern-European cities. „The social homogenization was one of the key points of the communist ideology, and the urban landscape offers an accurate translation of this social ideal in the material terms of the urban form.” (Bucica, 2003: 3)
