Cherry tales  – 2022
with Alina Melnikova

An installation created through a collectively shared vocabulary of motifs and ideas that zooms visual memory related to local pop culture, folk, traditions and music. Sediments of memories founded in the streets of Belgrade are exposed in 424 gallery.

The whole installation consists of two conceptual parts. The center of it is a vitrine. Its structure echoes the architectonic view of the city. A column inside is a ready-made sculpture wrapped in foam. The other part is called “Cherry Tales”. It was set in a gallery space and became a lab that merged the imagery provided by urban archaeology and yet undiscovered symbolism of a cherry tree. Totem-like sculptures made from multiple old announcements and posters that were coating street lights and the walls of Belgrade. Parallelly, images of cherry trees that grow spontaneously in the city are looped in a slow motion video. The fruit that unites and invites to share and communicate. Only a far aftertaste of this flavour recalls a Yugonostalgia and that these berries can be found as a symbol that represents revolutionary movements.
Overall, it was a turbo residency. Not only because it was compressed into a ten days time frame and accelerated deep dive into the city’s personality. Underneath the installation, as if from behind the scene, you could hear the integrated voice of nowadays Belgrade. Interviews with locals on turbo folk and turbo-tronic, a theme that does not yet leave indifferent talking about the historical legacy of this city portrait sketch.

Alina Melnikova & Fabrizio Contarino are two visual artists based in Barcelona, working together in design, sculpture and painting. They use a collectively engaging process to create installations and performances combining these mediums. The starting point of their work is a hybrid collection of visual material, found or produced that they mix, manipulate and transform. They constantly deal with visual memory related to pop culture.