Who is Guarding The Guardians?

The intervention indicated the nearby public institutions, which are entrusted with power as the guardians of the social system.

Urtica’s statement:

Site-specific installation implied creation of a new set of symbolic representations referring to the specific surroundings of Nadežda Petrović Gallery: the police, the court, the church and the National Museum. Starting from Juvenal’s rhetorical question: “But who shall guard the guardians?”^*1 The human society is differentiated into communicative subsystems (politics, law, economy, religion, culture, etc.) which cannot control operations of other systems without being controlled themselves. The issues of control and interdependence are the key elements of Urtica’s intervention. The light-boxes on the gallery’s facade displayed symbols designed in a form of guardians’ coat of arms whose ironic reflection rise awareness and act as a talismans that guard against guardians.

^*1 “Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Juvenal — Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, Roman satiric poet of the late 1st and early 2nd century CE