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Through film, photography, and installations, the Serbian-born artist Igor Schiller (1996) examines the rich cultural traditions of the Balkans and the impact these have on his identity. He mixes personal childhood memories, folklore, and geopolitical history with fiction and fantasy to create fairytale-like scenes. His attractive visual language is packed with humour and colourful scenery, but has a darker side as well.
Harvest (2025), for which Schiller is showing a teaser at Prospects, is the second film in a trilogy. The first part, Bloody Euro, is about the collapse of the imaginary kingdom of his youth. It zooms in on the period of violence in 1990s Serbia, and its impact on his family history. The second part continues with his departure to the Netherlands and the period that followed. It is a coming-of-age story, but told like a fairytale. The film’s central episode shows a harvest festival in his native village, which the main character organizes upon his return with the aim of healing the wounds from the past. A post-human creature from the future is summoned to guide the community and help them process their trauma. At Prospects this character has also physically entered the exhibition space in the shape of a large figure embracing the screen. This creature and other imaginative characters from the film serve as poetic metaphors for dealing with serious themes like identity and belonging in a light-hearted way. The main character in Harvest, for instance, discovers that his desire to venture into the world has also transformed his own concept of home. The art is to embrace the journey itself.
Text: Esmee Postma
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)