Series of photographic diptychs by Duška Boban was presented for the first time in the online exhibition project titled A View from the Inside that was initiated by the Museum of Fine Arts during the last year’s lockdown. At that time notions of isolation and distance have started to change the way we live and perceive our surroundings, Duška Boban has reacted to the new situation through her long photographic practice aimed at critical reading of urbanity. However, this time she focused on what was the most endangered aspect of urban life – the citizens. She reached for her personal archive of analogous photographs depicting urban landscape of Split and formed diptychs through reframing the original photographs and enlarging the segments that showed people seemingly hidden within the architecture. So, the photographs show a girl reading on a balcony, or a passer-by nearly hidden in the shadows of the trees, along the well-known skyscrapers by Radić or the south façade of the Križine hospital. Considering the fact that those are analogous photographs, the process of enlarging the detail has resulted in blurry, grainy images of people that visually suggest a completely new narrative about the relation between us and our surroundings.
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Prozori Gallery in Zagreb.
Duška Boban graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb in the class of professor Ante Kuduz in 2000. In 2013, she completed the postgraduate study in visual communications, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she conducted a research on urban identity which resulted in the final master’s degree thesis entitled “Public space and civic participation: Activism and Cultural Practices in Split during the last decade”. She is a member of Croatian Association of Artists of Applied Arts (ULUPUH), Zagreb; Croatian Association of Fine Arts (HULU), Split and KVART Association of Contemporary Art, Split. In 2011, she initiated an informal organization “For Marjan”, which organized many actions in public space using cultural practices in order to raise awareness about local cultural and natural heritage particularly of the 20th century. She works as a teacher of Photography, Video and Media Projects in School for Design, Graphics and Sustainable Building in Split.