Solitude

According to the latest census, 26 villages in Istria registered a population of less than three people. So we wanted people to expirience to be lonely in your village and process of researching past populations

The exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum of Istria ‘Solitude – Life of villages in Istria with up to three inhabitants’ curated by Ivona Orlić, interprets solitude through a modern construct – through photographs of the village, objects found or donated by the inhabitants themselves as a testimony of their lonely or solitary life. The exhibition, however, does not represent them spontaneously to the visitor.

The visitors enter one by one into the exhibition room, whose layout seeks to annihilate the space itself, with the result of literally becoming an experience of solitude.

The barely noticeable exhibits induce the visitor to search which sometimes results in emptiness, in the same way as the exhibition author’s attempt to find traces of life in the former villages or the exhibition layout designers’ attempt to find these locations on the map of Istria.

This exhibition makes the visitor and the observer actually experience and become aware of solitude – the Istrian one, but the personal one as well.

Villages with up to three inhabitants according to the census of 2011: Sveta Marija na Krasu, Kanegra (Buje); Benčići, Durčići, Kotli, Podkuk (Buzet); Jurići, Rupeni, Šeraje (Poreč); Vrnjak (Grožnjan); Rašpor (Lanišće); Skitača (Raša); Frnjolići, Ivići, Kapovići, Knapići (Sveti Lovreč Pazenatički); Bucalovići, Bujarići, Kelci, Maretići, Prkovići, Ribarići (Višnjan); Mastelići, Piškovica, Trombal, Vranići kod Vižinade (Vižinada).

The exhibition is hosted at the Ethnographic Museum of Istria in Pazin until March 2017.

The visual identity and the layout design of the exhibition were created by Studio Sonda, while its technical realization was accomplished in cooperation with Dragan Dimovski.