"We have already earned more money than we receive from the city budget, and only through online sales, before the official opening of the exhibition," Mirjana Odić, vice president of the Board of Directors, told Vreme. ULUS-a, about their first results charity events "It's nothing to me. See how I'm smiling."
The action starts tonight (May 27) at the ULUS gallery in Knez Mihailova Street in Belgrade and lasts for three days. The initial reason was to sell the works of members of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia to help employees who have not received a salary for several months.
Who finances ULUS?
The association of fine artists has existed for 106 years, it is one of the three oldest in Europe. It has more than 2000 members (756 active, those who pay membership fees) and 6 employees.
The way salaries reach employees is complicated. Mirjana Odić explains that for three of them, ULUS provides salaries through projects, and the rest receive based on the so-called entrusted jobs that ULUS performs as a representative association, which refers to independent artists. Money for entrusted jobs reaches ULUS like this: the Ministry of Finance pays the Ministry of Culture, which distributes it by cities, and the cities by beneficiaries.
Last year, there were no contests by the Ministry of Culture, and the two previous ones by the City, which means that there were no projects either. Then, for this year, ULUS received the same amount for entrusted jobs as for 2024 with the explanation that the number of independent artists in the Association has decreased. It is true that it has decreased because people are employed in order to have a more secure source of income, but that number is negligible and by no means proportionally corresponds to the reduction of the money allocated for this year.
As a consequence of all that, the mentioned charity action was created.
Huge solidarity
"Colleagues, 150 of them, donated 179 works, which is much more than we expected. Due to such a large number, this charity sale of ours turned into an exhibition of contemporary art. I assume that there would be the same number of works at the Contemporary Museum exhibition. We are very happy about that," says Mirjana Odović.
And yet he points out "huge solidarity and the need to help someone who is in trouble and ULUS itself".
"We started this action, so what happens. We couldn't even assume that humble artists would be able to collect more money than we get from the City!"
Mirjana Odić says that "they are aware of the possible reaction of the City. They could say: artists can do without our money, so in the future we don't need to allocate money for them. But that cannot happen by law. Cultural associations must operate according to an institutional concept, culture cannot exist without the state".
Programme
The charity action "It's nothing to me. See how I'm smiling" in the ULUS gallery in Knez Mihailova lasts until May 30.
On Saturday, May 29, as part of the accompanying program, there will be a psychological-film workshop "The Dark Side of Personality", which will be led by clinical psychologist and academic sculptor Gordana Belić, and the discussion "What is the price of artistic work?" on the occasion of the ULUS collection "Live from art" and the promotion of the Visual Art Database of Serbia and the calculator of exhibition and production fees for visual artists, which were announced for May 30.
The action ends with the beginning of the summer program in the "Cvijeta Zuzorić" Pavilion at Kalemegdan, the "ProCvjetavanje" program, which we will write about in another day.
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