Blue Factory, 2020
concrete, 435 x 285 x 400 cm (city of Šabac, Serbia, public sculpture)
production: Cultural Centre Šabac, City of Šabac, Set and Gudmark, Šabac, Serbia
curator: Filip Kovačević
photos: Filip Kovačević
The sculpture BLUE FACTORY was inspired by industrial heritage of the City of Šabac. A great number of inhabitants worked in some of the numerous chemical industry plants. In addition to impressive appearance of factory halls and enormous chimneys in whose shadow we grew up, Šabac was flooded with promotional material extolling the factory. Each house had a calendar, schedule book, ashtray, flag, pen, pin or sticker, with the silhouette of the factory on it with the sawtooth roof and towering chimney. That was the image we grew up with and that stuck to our memory – which became the collective memory of the city.
The idea of the sculpture BLUE FACTORY is to bring back this image of the factory, in an iconic, almost graphical manner, using concrete as material, to the settlement Benska Bara, which was inhabited mostly by factory workers. With its dimensions and appearance of a toy, when compared with the original monumental dimensions of the old factory, the sculpture gives positive, optimistic tone in the new situation. In addition to the fact that it links iconically with the history of Šabac, it represents a look to the future and premonition of a new beginning.
The sculpture was created as a part of the Residential Programme for Visual Artists of the Culture Centre Šabac, under the auspices of the City of Šabac and with the donor aid of the companies Set and Gudmark in 2019/20.