From family lore that, as a baby, he was traded to his parents for a set of dishrags to his one-time application to a Hollywood mortuary school to the heavily accented culture clashes of his divided roots between Canada and the former Yugoslavia, you might say that Montreal artist Milutin Gubash’s life has all the makings of a prime-time sitcom.
In fact, that comedic scenario of a modern-day anti-hero on a quest to discover his identity—with a little help, and sometimes hindrance, from his family and friends—has been the driving force behind much of Gubash’s work in photography, video and performance over the past decade.
Yet, as curator Sandra Dyck explains in her Fall 2012 magazine feature, “Family Matters,” there’s much more to Gubash than canned laughter: “Gubash’s seemingly casual manipulation of the categories of fact and fiction, private and public, and funny and sad connects his work as an artist to an understanding of the human condition.”
In this slideshow, a selection of images by Gubash reviews that telling balance between the humour of where you come from and the truth of where you’re going.
