HEALTH CENTER, EXHIBITION BY MARKO ERCEGOVIĆ AND IGOR LASIĆ
HEALTH CENTER
Marko Ercegović and Igor Lasić
October 17 – November 16, 2024
Nova cesta 66
OPEN: Tuesday – Friday: 4 p.m. – 8 p.m., Saturday: 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.
FREE ENTRANCE!
"I need to see my doctor!" – can you imagine having to check your wallet to see whether you can afford it every time you pronounce this phrase? And can you imagine a new residential-commercial complex erected in the location where once stood your community health center? We can, to our chagrin!
This exhibition has been inspired by the Trešnjevka Health Center, the first of its kind in Croatia after the World War II, and its branch offices, established in the mid 1950, as vital points across the neighborhood. The memory of some of those facilities is kept through artifacts in the virtual collection of the Trešnjevka Neighborhood Museum. Health centers were conceived as key places for prevention and unburdening of hospitals, and intended to offer a wide spectrum of health services. To what extent is such a system sustainable in today’s context of capitalist economy and cutting of social services? Marko Ercegović and Igor Lasić, using photography and reportage respectively, tried to find an answer in the multi-year research this exhibition resulted from.
Igor Lasić explains: "We visited the majority of Health Center Zagreb West branch facilities in 2023 and 2024, some of them even before that, in our wish to carefully listen to the voices and faithfully transfer the images from waiting rooms and doctors’ offices. Although one could easily expect to find there, in the best-case scenario, a polyphony of voices, to some degree in harmony, what we mostly found was a uniform intonation shared by the public healthcare system actors, regardless of their formal side, or their affiliation. Doctors and nurses, as well as patients we met, often pointed out themselves how they all share a common, universal interest.
Not only due to this fact, this reportage bypasses the direct, usual relationship between the medium of photography and interlocutors. In that sense we must emphasize that we never took photographs of the people in waiting rooms who gave statements, nor we visually presented staff that wished to talk to the authors. Likewise, we never distinguished between the Health Center Zagreb West branch facilities we visited."
One must add another thing, which a careful eye won’t miss; the fact that a number of photographs were not taken in Trešnjevka – where the MUP (the Croatian Ministry of Interior) Health Center, which does not belong to the Health Center Zagreb West network, is also located – which is not unusual, since the point is that residents of a given neighborhood today cannot rely anymore exclusively on their neighborhood health centers.
We would like to thank everyone who found themselves near the voice recorder and the camera lens, and especially those willing to actively participate, as well as the management of the Health Center Zagreb West. Despite the fact that sometimes it was challenging to reconcile methodologies of artistic and journalistic work with worry that pervades waiting rooms and doctor’s offices, our common language was a higher goal we all aspire to achieve, and that is a widely accessible public health system.
CURATED BY: Ana Kutleša
PRINT, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND SETUP BY: Fini print
DESIGNED BY: Hrvoje Živčić
TRANSLATED BY: Dunja Bakić
PRODUCED BY: BLOK
The project is part of the Trešnjevka Neighborhood Museum – live heritage program and is financed by the City of Zagreb funds. Marko Ercegović received financial support for this project from the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. BLOK's annual program for 2024 is supported by the 'Kultura Nova' foundation.
