Megalomania could be identified as the - possibly unconscious - subject matter of Ivan Grubanov's art. This is perhaps a bold statement, but a productive one when analysing and discussing the significance of his work to date.

Grubanov's artworks offer a complex narrative in which he positions himself amid reconstructions of events of more-or-less 'historical' importance. This strategy accompanies many of his projects, and often takes the form of a distanced role-play (the artist playing himself ), which has as its goal a self-portrait, albeit an indirect one. In April 2006, Grubanov gave a 'political' speech in front of the National Parliament in Belgrade, Serbia. The rhetorical exercise presented Grubanov in the role of a politician (possibly former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic), overlapping the artist's character with the speaker's, and at the same time referring to earlier speeches given in the past at the same location: 'Welcome to share this square with me once more. Welcome to wish for a new tomorrow with me. Welcome to write another paragraph of our difficult and glorious history.'¹ The speech condenses different moments in time, exorcising painful memories and ghosts from the past, but Grubanov avoids being specific at any moment. The speech is made of hollow phrases that, oddly enough, seem to acquire a certain 'political weight'. With a faked naïveté and invoking a bright future, the 'artist as political hero' speaks in front of a small audience and bears witness to the political ineffectiveness of art, trapped in its own realm despite making a political claim.

An earlier piece, Ceremony (2002), featured the artist as an intruder in another system of representation: a Chinese wedding album.