Journeys
Last Saturday, to mark International Museum Day, our museum ceremoniously opened a new thematic exhibition dedicated to journeys – movement through space and time, encounters, memories, and personal stories that shape our identities. This exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the meaning of travel – not just physical journeys, but also inner, symbolic, and emotional ones.
Museums, as we have once again affirmed, are the starting point for such journeys – without borders, without passports, without time constraints.
We extend special thanks to the artists who participated in the program and whose contributions brought unique energy and emotion to the exhibition space.
Our sincere gratitude also goes to our partners from 90-60-90 / Platform for Contemporary Art and the Punkt association, for their dedication, creative support, and strong spirit of collaboration that enriched and enlivened this exhibition.
We thank all the visitors who enhanced this event with their presence, stories, and impressions.
About the 90-60-90 Gallery
The 90-60-90 Association, founded in 2001, actively contributes to the cultural life of Croatia. Its mission is to promote and develop cultural and artistic creation by integrating the contemporary visual art scene into independent, alternative cultural spaces dedicated to youth. The 90-60-90 Gallery, as one of the association’s primary programs, organizes a variety of visual art events to promote contemporary visual art, with a special focus on new media artistic practices, including spatial and sound installations, video projections, and interdisciplinary and intermedial works.
About the Project “Journeys”
“Journeys” is an interdisciplinary project taking place at the Betina Museum of Wooden Shipbuilding on the island of Murter from May 17 to June 30, 2025. The project explores themes of migration, movement, and identity through the works of fifteen contemporary female artists who use a variety of media, from video and painting to installations and public space interventions.
The project is implemented by the 90-60-90 Association in collaboration with the Betina Museum of Wooden Shipbuilding and the Punkt association, which organized video workshops with local elementary school students on the topic of Betina’s identity. The exhibition includes multimedia works as well as site-specific actions and installations throughout the island of Murter.
From the Exhibition Brochure Foreword
Journeys
Interdisciplinary Project / Betina, Murter Island, 2025
Opening: 17 May 2025 at 19:00
Duration: 17 May – 30 June 2025
Journeys, migrations, and movements reflect the socio-political everyday life and the global nature of our world. In the small Dalmatian town of Betina on Murter Island, shipbuilding is not merely a craft but a heritage that deeply embodies and presents the spirit of the place. The exhibition at the Betina Museum of Wooden Shipbuilding invites us to contemplate journeys and migrations as universal experiences that shape our world. Fifteen contemporary female artists have explored and responded to the theme of journeys through various approaches and media of contemporary art practice, uniquely blending tradition and modernity. The exhibition includes works in various media, from videos and paintings to installations and public space interventions.
The project is implemented by the Association 90-60-90 / Platform for Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Betina Museum of Wooden Shipbuilding, where the project is held. It encompasses a multimedia exhibition that includes actions and site-specific works in the public space of Murter Island. As part of the project, a video workshop was held in collaboration with the local Murterski Škoji Elementary School on the topic of questioning Betina’s identity, organized by the Association PUNKT, a Platform for the Advancement of Culture from Zagreb, which is entirely oriented towards the project “City at Second Glance” – a traveling interdisciplinary research-educational and exhibition project that connects engaged city thinking, youth education through workshops and lectures with visual artists.
Participating Artists:
Milijana Babić, Nicole Hewitt, Ana Kolega, Lina Kovačević, Martina Mezak, Kata Mijatović, Vesna Perunović, Renata Poljak, Nika Radić, Neli Ružić, Marijana Stanić, Sandra Sterle, Matea Šabić Sabljić, Tanja Vujasinović, Vlasta Žanić
In Betina on Murter Island, where shipbuilding is not just a craft but a heritage that deeply embodies and presents the spirit of the place, the words of the Phoenician Tridon, “a shipbuilder who did not shy away from either evil or good: ‘Sometimes one goes offshore, sometimes one sails along the coast.’ In brothels and on the open sea, among pirates and sages, he sought the secret of sailing, never stopping anywhere, like a true son of the noisy harlot sea, he believed that a ship must be built by knowing the sea and that it must be shaped by the wave itself,” seem to resonate.
(Antun Bonifačić, Paul Valéry)
Just as the wave shapes the ship, so does the journey shape the traveler. In this case, the travelers are women, whose works are shaped under the influence of real or imaginary journeys, by sea or land, through Mljet or Baranja, nature or mechanics, permanent departures or temporary returns, metaphysical time or time spent in the concrete construction of a ship.
Journeys once signified adventurous personalities; let’s remember the Amazon explorers, the Karlovac natives Mirko and Stevo Seljan. When Mirko perished in the Amazon, Stevo continued, “because he knew nothing else.” Later, the exploratory impulse turned into a consumerist one; adventurers were succeeded by tourists. Today, people go to ‘destinations with a list of must-see locations,’ which modern travelers no longer have time to experience live because they must photograph them and store them in virtual albums. Once, postcards were sent; today, they are produced on-site in countless quantities.
In addition to voluntary journeys, there are also forced ones. Once, a ship would arrive, and the entire village would board, taking them from the paradisiacal landscapes of Brač straight into the hell of artificial fertilizer mines near Tierra del Fuego. Today, a hundred years later, an exodus is again (or still) underway, but the ship is no longer real but rubber, not heading to Chile but to Sicily. The village is not emptied by downy mildew but by machine guns. At the saving destination, they are welcomed with survival foil flags, which actually announce their future.
Once, there was a white and a black transatlantic route: the white for conquerors from Birmingham to New York, the black for slaves from Luanda to Recife. Once, writer and adventurer Blaise Cendrars recommended traveling by cargo ships because the food was best there. Today, setting aside luxury cruises and risky escapes, between tourists and businessmen, we also notice those driven by insatiable curiosity, like Blaise, to see the other side of the globe, to meet gauchos and Bedouins, Maoris and Mandarins. To wait for the sun to set, lie on the sand in the middle of the Sahara, and look up, because there is no greater sky than the one above the Sahara.
Besides horizontal journeys through space, where one travels imagined paths following signposts that, bound by predetermined orbits, inevitably disappear into one another, or by classic means—bus, train, and ship, real and paper ones—or runs eternally around the same olive tree or drives the same route, and the journey, like its dreamlike illustration, appears in the window glass, shimmering the horizon now to one side, now to the other, there are also vertical journeys, those through time. Whether we go here or there or not, we constantly travel vertically in an elusive absurdity, because at every moment, we are actually standing still; we are no longer who we were a moment ago, but we are not yet who we will soon be.
In reality, a journey is the time between departure and arrival, setting off and docking, takeoff and landing, where it is important that it be as smooth as possible. It begins with leaving the house and ends with entering it. The door is the same. In metaphorical translation, the door has disappeared; only its frame remains, symbolizing passage. From one side to the other, are we preparing to enter or exit? Once, standing before the door would remind us of Kafka; today, we know that these are neither doors nor their frame but a metal detector. A journey is the time between two controls.
Boris Greiner
Exhibited Works:
Milijana Babić, The Artist Must Be Relaxed, 2023
In collaboration with Nada Žgank
Artist’s book, edition 4/5
Nicole Hewitt, Time Travelers Zone 01, 2025
Audio installation
Ana Kolega, I Couldn’t Stop, 2023
Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm
Lina Kovačević, Set for Online Romantic Dinner, 2011
Mixed media, 3D print, ceramics, cotton, river pearls
Martina Mezak, Flags, 2023
Site-specific installation
Kata Mijatović, Baranja Bus, 2009
Video, 12′, camera: Zoran Pavelić
Vesna Perunovich, Unoccupied New York, 2012
Video, 13:04 min, loop
Renata Poljak, PORVENIR, 2020
Video work, 12 min
Nika Radić, We Travel a Lot, 2017
Film, 17 min
Neli Ružić, NO LONGER NOT YET, 2025
Light box, 110 x 18 cm
Marijana Stanić, Passages, 2022
Audio installation
Sandra Sterle,
- On the Island, 1996
Photo series, 6 x 50 x 70 cm, 1 x 70 x 100 cm, text 20 x 30 cm - Round and Round, 2017
Video, color, sound, stereo
Compilation of video works from 1996, 2003, 2010, 2017
Matea Šabić Sabljić, B R O D I / S H E
“I D O N ‘ T W A I T F O R A S H I P, I B U I L D A S H I P”, 2023–2025
Installation and intervention
Tanja Vujasinović, Island Connected by a Bridge, 2025
Site-specific intervention in public space
Vlasta Žanić, Sjećanje na Ciklus, 2023.
video instalacija, loop
Video radionica – Grad na drugi pogled
Mentorica: Tanja Vujasinović
Autori filma: Ante Bilić, Veronika Donđivić, Marta Duić, Gabriela Lončarević, Noema Mudronja, Fabian Pilipac, David Preložnik (učenice/i OŠ Murterski škoji)