In her video installation Artist’s Statement (2010), shown in a dilapidated room in a former artillery barracks during this past Manifesta, Adela Jusic offered advice on how to construct an effective summary of one’s intentions as an artist. The work was shown as part of ’Constitution for Temporary Display’, an exhibition staged by tranzit.org, one of three curatorial collectives invited to curate the eighth edition of Manifesta, held in Murcia, Spain. Synced footage of Jusic, projected against opposing walls, showed her reading instructions on how to write a convincing artist’s statement: her imperious, Eastern European-inflected voice firm and persistent, each iteration of herself concurring with the other and adding to the demands of this apparently innocuous piece of career advice. This work - an aspect of an exhibition, a part of a biennial, a response by a collective to the aims of an umbrella organisation, which is itself within a network of supporting partners - is a good place to begin upon the questions raised by Manifesta 8, addressing as it does the authenticity or sincerity of the artistic persona and the limits of artistic freedom.



Louise O’Hare, Manifesta 8 and the Problems of Sincerity, Afterall Online Magazine

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