NMG@PRAKTIKA 2019–2021: Three-Year Catalogue
What remains when three years of cultural production move through shifting venues, an earthquake, a pandemic, and constant “making-do” conditions — and the programme still doesn’t stop, but transforms? The NMG@PRAKTIKA Three-Year Catalogue 2019–2021 captures exactly that period: powerful, fragile, and stubbornly alive.
This catalogue is not just a list of exhibitions. It is a record of persistence: work produced within Praktika gallery and the Kocka club space (Dom mladih / Youth Centre), at the margins of the system — where culture often happens long before it becomes “visible”. It brings together texts by the curatorial team, visual documentation, and reflections on working conditions, community, and the real limits within which independent culture is built day by day.
Two introductions, two angles of the same reality
In her introduction, Natasha Kadin opens the catalogue from within — from a position of long duration, responsibility, and collective work: turning a room that wasn’t a gallery into a gallery, and turning “the audience” into active participants.
I’m truly amazed how long we’ve been doing this — we’re now preparing our 11th year of this exhibition cycle in the small gallery space of Klub Kocka, which wasn’t even a gallery at the beginning. We created it together, patiently and persistently, with precision and care. And I’m amazed by how many wonderful, talented, knowledgeable, and unique people have worked and created there — as artists, curators, technicians, photographers, specialists from many fields — and also as an audience that becomes an active agent of the art that keeps happening there: living, growing, and evolving.
The second introduction, written by Katarina Duplančić, speaks from the ground level of production reality: deadlines, formats, technical issues, logistics, exhaustion — and the essential work that often remains invisible. Here, “patience” isn’t a decorative word. It’s a working method.
Because we miss deadlines… Because the format doesn’t fit… Because there are few of us — and there’s a lot of work.
The catalogue also includes the NMG@KARANTENA episode, showing how the programme didn’t “pause” in crisis, but searched for new formats and new ways of staying present. Read this catalogue as a map: not only what happened, but how it was even possible — and how many people, decisions, and invisible labour hours had to stand behind each exhibition.
IMPRINT
Title: NMG@PRAKTIKA 2019–21
Programme curator & publication editor: Natasha Kadin
Exhibition curators: Katarina Duplančić, Natasha Kadin, Bojan Krištofić, Mirta Lučin, Vedran Perkov, Tina Vukasović Đaković, Ivana Vukušić
Design & layout: Petra Davidenko
Translation & proofreading: Katarina Duplančić
Technicians: Tihana Mandušić, Hrvoje Pelićarić, Franko Sardelić Kolinac
Documentation: Tihana Mandušić, Gildo Bavčević
Organizer & producer: Mavena – 36 njezinih čuda
Donors: National Foundation for Civil Society Development, Kultura nova Foundation, Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Split
Thanks: Arts Academy in Split, Multimedia Cultural Centre Split, Coalition of Youth Associations, Dom mladih Platform, Croatian Association of Visual Artists, Gallery of Fine Arts Split
Split, 2022.