There is a stitch of black humor, ever a Slovenian artist Jasmina Cibic is preparing for an exhibition of his work in some European countries. “They’re firing so many museum directors,” he says with a fragile smile, “so we had this joke that my show will be the last in this director’s career.”

Cibic draws attention to developments in Hungary and Poland, where right-wing governments have attacked art, fired museum and theater directors, silenced writers and pressured galleries. Even in the UK, which may be much less authoritarian but prone to populist nationalism, Cibic has encountered obstacles. After Brexit, he says, “I lost [some exhibitions] in English museums and I was told that they would reprogram to suit local and national interests. She smiled. “Given the nature of my work, it couldn’t be more bizarre.”

Cibic is inspired by the European identity crisis of the 20th century and how culture can be “hijacked by ideology”. Her recent work has focused on the idea of ​​“cultural gifts” – such as building, music or art – and what they mean for the power and ability of the regime to support cultural identity and nationalism. Her film The Gift is one of several works that helped her to this year’s victory Jarman Award, an annual award for artists working with moving images.

Beautifully filmed, with music and dance and set in locations that were in themselves political gifts – the Oscar Niemeyer building for the French Communist Party in Paris, the Palace of Nations in Geneva and the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, “gifted” by Stalin – Dar tells the story of a competition to create a unique work of art that would “hold our nation together” or, as one character puts it, to show “who we are and who we want to be”. The artist, engineer and diplomat each share their example with four judges in a film who wonders what art means to the country (“dynamism in art and culture creates dynamism in a nation,” as one judge puts it), what future generations will make such a cultural gift and what “obligations” it brings. It is in the previous part film trilogy Hope, Cibic explored iconic architecture and national identity and revisited key moments in 20th century European history.

Cibic, who was born in Ljubljana in 1979 when it was part of the former Yugoslavia, has been working on the notion of “soft power” and the way culture is used for political gain, at least since 2013, when represented Slovenia at the Venice Biennale. “At the time, we already seemed to feel that new nationalism in Eastern Europe was beginning to rise. I only looked at the local peculiarities of Slovenian icons, successful and unsuccessful. ”She decorated her pavilion with illustrations of the so-called“ local Hitler beetles ”- beetles native to Slovenia, named after Hitler in the 1930s – and still lifes. hanging in the government buildings of her country. “It was all related to how Slovenia over time decided to present itself through culture.”

As she says, she was more attracted to “Europe’s identity crises, because that’s when culture is usually called to try to fix something somehow”. The script for Darilo, as in some of her works so far, consists of fragments of political speeches and debates – the result of many years of international archival research by Cibic and her team.

We meet at her London studio. Cibic, dressed in black, is a warm, fun and energetic speaker. With Darilo, she also wanted to look at “our responsibility as artists in this whole situation. For commissions, it’s easy to say, ‘I was subscribed.’ But with this idea of ​​these ‘gifts’ there is more at stake. Where are we ready to go? Because there is no pure money, there is no more non-political engagement. Whatever we do is political. “

He comes, he says, from a politically engaged family. “My grandparents were all partisans, they all fought in the anti-fascist struggles in the former Yugoslavia.” Her father was a teacher who taught the work of Marx and Engels “until the system collapsed.” His books were moved to a lower shelf and Cibič’s rabbit ate them. Both of her parents would love to work in culture, she says, but her grandparents “were red townspeople. The artwork was purchased as wedding gifts. You don’t do art, you buy it. “

Cibič was 11 years old when the first of the Yugoslav wars broke out – a 10-day conflict between Slovenia and the Yugoslav army after its declaration of independence in 1991. This conflict does not affect her, but she sees that among other artists of her generation from the former Yugoslavia, “many of us now live abroad and are really dealing with a legacy.”

She is fascinated by the former Yugoslavia, in part because she believes its failure should serve as a lesson. “The collapse of Europe that is happening before our eyes is what Yugoslavia has experienced, following the example of the rise of nationalism, ‘let’s not waste money abroad,'” especially in international cultural projects, he says. “In the late 1960s, nationalism began to flare up, so Yugoslav diplomacy decided to start large-scale construction projects at home, [honour] anti-fascist struggle – they built large monuments and so on. But the idea of ​​being abroad is fading. “

Cibic saw friends from continental Europe leaving the UK after Brexit. She has been here for 20 years and has a 12-year-old daughter, but she says that, like many other EU artists living in the UK, she felt the ground had been “broken” when the referendum was announced. She says winning the Jarman Award gave her a strong sense that she actually belongs here. In addition, Cibic says, she cares more about younger artists. She says she first noticed that the students she teaches look depressed “in terms of what is possible. If you don’t have this internationalism, this cross-pollination, we are moving so far away. “

Cibic is an internationalist – she is preparing to perform in New Zealand – and, as she says, there is a sense of urgency regarding her new job. She relies on being able to review archives, and her films are so location-specific, working with architecture that “once – or still represents – national or supranational authorities. I notice a worrying trend of closing access to the question of what these spaces mean. ‘I don’t have a project to say to myself,’ Oh, I’ll do that in five years. ‘ That needs to be done now. “