Genius Loci
sea by the Memorijal complex (Spomenik)
Grey Area association continues the series of producing and presenting artworks about the Memorial Complex from 1982, colloquially known as Spomenik (Monument), designed by architect and designer Bernardo Bernardi as homage to the fallen residents of Korčula in the Second World War. The monument was designed as a multifunctional public space, in the form of an amphitheatre made of stone as the sole material.
The work Genius Loci represents a set of seven luminous objects which together make up an abstracted miniature of Korčula’s Memorial Complex. The concept of genius loci is rooted in Roman mythology and metaphorically denotes the protective spirit of a place, i.e., the field of intensified energy enveloped in urban tissue. While observing Bernardi’s Memorial Complex as a material incarnation of the “spirit of place” of the town of Korčula and as a site laden with multilayered political narratives, the artist sublimes its formal characteristics, translating them into digital three-dimensional space and subsequently returning them to the physical world and to its original in the form of 3D printed luminous artefacts.
Serving as a miniature fragmented proxy of the original Memorial Complex, the artist places with an artistic gesture the objects in seabed in the beach shoal, towards which Memorial Complex itself opens up with its stone wings, the divided auditorium of the amphitheatre. Beneath the sea surface, the fragments of the model of the architectural landmark – located a few metres away – signal with light their presence to anyone willing to notice it.
With an artistic gesture, the objects will be submerged in the sea in the immediate vicinity of the memorial complex on Friday, 22 September at 7 p.m. Objects and documentation of the action at sea will be exhibited in galleries. The exhibition ‘Fragments from the Legacy’, set on the 3rd floor of the Korčula Town Museum, is designed as a long-term exhibition program that continues to collect, process, and exhibit designed objects, photographs, interviews, and documentaries related to the legacy of Bernardo Bernardi.
Translation: Mirta Jurilj
About author
Gaia Radić is a new media artist born in 2001 in Pula. She graduated in sculpture from the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka, and currently studies architecture at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana and attends graduate study programme in video, animation and new media at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. In her work, she primarily uses the medium of computer graphics, i.e., the technique of 3D modelling, and actualises her concepts as a combination of animation and spatial installation. She has hitherto exhibited in five solo and over twenty group exhibitions in Croatia and Slovenia. She has had a solo exhibition at Karas Gallery in Zagreb in 2023 and participated in the 63rd Poreč Annale in the same year. She collaborates with the Centre for Innovative Media in Rijeka (CIM APURI), Kortil Gallery from Rijeka, UR Institute from Dubrovnik, and Metamedij association from Pula. She received 2nd Erste Award at the Youth Salon and was finalist of the Golden Watermelon Young Artist Award 6.0. She is a member of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists of Istria. Alongside exhibition activities, she has also held several educational workshops and lectures on the subject of virtual space and 3D modelling.
