Title
ONE LANGUAGE ONE NATION
Artist
Goran Denić
Tehnique
Mozaik, 12m2 Turkish delight
Year of production
2016
About This Project
The Sweet Memories (Help Yourself to Two) art installation is an integral part of the exhibition: it consists of an assortment of multi-colored squares of Turkish delight, with a combined weight of 50 kg, which is arranged in such a way as to simulate a traditional Oriental mosaic (the Judeo-Christian-Muslim culture) and which, in Serbian Cyrillic, bears the inscription ONE LANGUAGE ONE NATION. The inscription is derived from the Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer slogan, meaning One people, one empire, one leader. Playing with a Nazi slogan articulates the slippage of meaning which the ZMUC again brings to the foreground here. The installation conjures the tongue as the part of the body that perceives taste (hence the Turkish delight), so that, when the confectionery has all been eaten up, communication can begin in a new language, a sweet one. The ambivalent meaning of ‘tongue’/‘language’ is a tool to level, through the organ of taste, differences which language creates in society as a speech system.