Sketch no.3

Sketch No 3 , 2018. Installation: railway sleepers, rize, dry plants, video projection in a loop, approximately 220 x 600 cm

Sketch no 3  consists of 13 slightly raised wooden railway sleepers with circular hollows, which when filled with rice create a dark-light pattern resembling domino tiles. In extension of the railway sleepers, there is a rectangle arrangement of locally collected dried flora. The backdrop for this sculptural element is a video projection of the shimmer of a sunlit sea surface on the endless horizon. 

Through each of these elements, Čirkinagić critically addresses a certain period that Cuban society has gone through. Railway sleepers, which we often relate to progress and development of our modern civilization, are for Čirkinagić equally, if not even more so, a reminder of the lifeblood of exploitation. The domino pattern is a reference to the so-called ‘domino theory’ extensively used by the United States during the Cold War to articulate the spreading effect of communist regimes – a political development that the West feared, but which proved not to come about. The dried flora symbolises the socialist Cuba, which once was based on flourishing ideas of freedom, equality and justice, but today only exists as ideas of  the past, without life or potential growth. The last element of this work, i.e. the video projection of the open sea and the horizon, instils both uncertainty and optimism regarding the future of Cuba.