In 2005, during a trip to Bosnia, American-Bosnian businessman Semir Osmanagić noticed that several mountainous formations near the town of Visoko resembled pyramids in shape. In the following years, he published a number of books in which he tried to prove the existence of these hidden pyramids through speculations about ancient civilizations and archaeological finds, the authenticity of which was supported by only a small, but all the more vocal part of the scientific community. The rest of the experts turned their backs on this popular Indiana Jones cosplayer with the attitude that it is necessary to seek truth, not belief.
At the same time, this rationalist assumption lost its impact already at the end of the 20th century, when its gradual questioning culminated in postmodernism. It fully opened the floodgates of cultural eclecticism, which manifested itself in the area of faith with the rise of the new age movement – an approach to spirituality that arbitrarily remixed the mythology and knowledge of originally separate religions or civilizations. The semblance of binding order was shattered by the awareness of seductive chaos. The slanted blocks of modernist housing estates were replaced by technical as well as historic buildings, on which elements in the form of small glass pyramids often grew.
The individual works of Marko Obradović represent an insight into the magic of chaos, which he understands as an emancipatory practice consisting in the free creation and overlapping of personal mythologies, rituals and symbolism. Belief in the Bosnian pyramids represents a collective practice of chaos magic, in which a community of believers sheds years of Western narratives and hierarchies and redefines its own identity. Magical elements such as the alleged healing power of the pyramids or their connection with cosmic forces represent a form of escape from the bleakness of the surrounding world. According to Marko Obradović, the seemingly senseless belief in the pyramids then becomes a form of resistance.
The symbolism of the pyramid dissolves in the individual exhibited works into expanded meanings, which also include the so-called pyramid scheme – in many countries, an illegal business model whose earnings are based on the paid recruitment of participants into the business with the promise of easy acquisition of wealth. It is an exploitative practice that often appears precisely in the sector of new age healing and eco products, and thanks to which the most vulnerable sections of society often lose their finances. Belief in miraculous enrichment through a pyramid scheme is then in the overwhelming majority of cases just as much a magical disillusionment as the belief in the Bosnian pyramids.
The exhibition is accompanied by Marija Iva Gocić’s performance called Pyramid Girl (?), which represents a meditative practice of inhaling and exhaling smoke as a means of calming down. It is a metaphorical process of purification on the way to achieving defined aspirations, which can be precisely the effort to reach the top of an imaginary pyramid. However, the smoke has a double function in this case – it is a means of purification and a “brain” fog in which uncertainty and confusion are hidden.
text by Barbora Ilić
Marko Obradović (*1998, Utrecht) is an interdisciplinary visual artist living in Belgrade. His work deals with themes of identity, abjection, transhumanism and esotericism, most often through painting, printmaking and installations.
Marija Iva Gocić (*1998, Belgrade) is a visual artist and performer, whose work often deals with corners of human nature and the dynamics of social relations. She is a founding member of the Belgrade experimental theater Experience.