North Norwegian Art Centre is pleased to start the exhibition program for 2023 with 'Projekti u dialogu - Projects in dialogue' by Damir Avdagić. In the exhibition, two video works Prolazi izdanje 1980-2021 (Passengers between 1980-2021) 2021 and Prevodenje (Translation) 2014 are shown - as well as selected material from the artist's archive. The works address issues related to migration, identity, trauma and reconciliation. The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia form the historical backdrop for the videos and for the artist's own family history.

Damir Avdagić's main material is the spoken word, stories, which are transcribed and processed with care before they are given a final form of presentation. The stories are collected through conversations, archives and interviews with ex-Yugoslavs who fled during the conflict in the 1990s.

A recurring strategy in several of Avdagić's works is video recording of reenactments, carefully worked out from transcribed testimonies belonging to one generation and performed by another. The method creates both distance and closeness. The stories are filtered through other voices and create an extra link between the experienced and the articulated. Furthermore, the reproduced narratives open up new conversations - and considerations - that stretch through time, across generations and ethnic affiliation. Perhaps they also find new communities: in experiences, self-understanding, close relationships, anecdotes, humor and in life in the diaspora.

Damir Avdagić (b. 1987, Bosnia-Herzegovina) lives and works in Oslo. He is educated with a master's degree in art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2008-2014) and a master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studio at the University of California, UCLA (2013-2016). In addition, he has held residencies at ISCP (International Studio and Curatorial Program) in New York, USA, WIELS Residency, Brussels, Belgium and 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, CA, USA. Avdagic's art education began in 2006 at Nordland Art and Film School in Kabelvåg. During his artistic career, he has shown his works internationally at a number of institutions, including 18th Street Art Center (Santa Monica, USA), Changwon Sculpture Biennale (Changwon, South Korea), Kunsthall Charlottenborg (Copenhagen, Denmark), WIELS Center for Contemporary Art (Brussels, Belgium) and Kristiansand Kunsthall.

Curator Adriana Alves