Montenegrin artist Irena Lagator Pejović presented herself with the exhibition "For the Common Good" in Austria, in Linz, and today she will give a lecture on the topic "Limited responsibility" in which she will talk about her artistic practice, at 19.30:XNUMX p.m., in Kepler salon, in Linz.
It is a program of lectures focused on the contemporary art of Central and Eastern Europe and its historical narratives, critical positions and methodologies written in response to the change in the global world order from 1989 and dealing with the problem of globalization of regional art and its history. The lectures problematize the global perspective of art history from a regional point of view, but also strategies for positioning regional art history in a global context.
"The conversation will be focused on the theme of the exhibition - 'For the common good', which questions planetary responsibility and 'common' in the context of environmental crises, as well as the question of what art can do to realize unlimited responsibility?", announced Lagator Pejović for "Vijesti", and the organizers point out that Lagator Pejović is trying to awaken a general sense of responsibility with his participation.
"The artist uses photosensitive/photosensitive fiscal accounts using them as indexical traces of consumer activities and as signs of a culture of limited responsibility. What can art do to reduce unlimited liability?”.
Her solo exhibition "For the Common Good" opened on October 1, 2019 and runs until February 1 of this year, and was realized as part of the "Im Vorbeigehen/In Passing" art project, which has been held since 2000 at the Catholic University of Linz. . As part of that, every semester one artist is invited to exhibit their works in the university building, which becomes a temporary artistic intervention, and thus encourages a dialogue between the works of art and the users of the building. The curator of this year's program and exhibition is assistant professor Karolina Majevska-Gude.
In this exhibition, the artist also deals with environmental issues, and in her works she explores the visual possibilities of speaking about human responsibility. Works include the photo-series 'Plastic Water' (2017), the installation 'Forward Play Reverse' (2019) and 'Temporary Landfill. Rotations in a given space" (2004)."
"In this exhibition, I deal with ecological issues in a sense that can be understood by referring to Felix Guattari's concept of existential territories and three ecological registers: ecological, social and mental. Using those three areas of ecology, I also raise the issue of water, because thinking about the relationship between the human world and water, according to Astrida Neimanis, enables a new understanding of community. In the same way, in my hydro-works I explore the visual possibilities of speaking about human responsibility in relation to water and through it and its histories", she tells "Vijesta".
And although the motive is social responsibility and its visibility and functionality in everyday life, the works that make up the exhibition refer to the legacy of the socialist system and "open up utopian questions that today in these times of crisis could represent new hope". The title of the exhibition, points out Lagator Pejović, quotes a sentence from the film "Iron Gate" (1969), which shows the construction process of the Đerdap hydroelectric plant.
"It is an exhibition that cites the legacy of the socialist system from which we have already emerged through the transition process. As a person and an artist, I was formed on certain values of that system, I think that it is something that is interesting to recall today in order to extract new knowledge from how consistently we implemented certain social goals and ask ourselves how successful we were in that. The exhibition raises the question of whether today, from the perspective of various world crises, primarily ecological, on different levels, we would recognize and perhaps reconsider the values of the past, but also because we recognize the environments that apply them and where the problems in which we find ourselves today are practically reduced at a minimum," she says.
Lecturers and topics that preceded the Montenegrin artist are: Beata Hock and "Globalization of Eastern European art history", Katarzina Citlak "Transculturation, cultural transfer and colonial matrix of power on the margins of the Cold War: Eastern European art seen from South America", Pavlina Morganova "Art history of places ”, Bojana Piškur “Southern constellations in art and culture: some cases of non-aligned movements”, Karolina Majevska-Gude “Peripheries of the world unite! From global to alter-globalist art history: Piotr Piotrowski's concept of art history", Georg Schollhammer "A discussion of the art histories of the Central-Eastern European neo-avant-gardes in Austria written after 1989", Kathleen Reinhardt "Grey zones - art and the exhibition industry in the GDR- in between adaptation and underground".
Urgent issues of our time
Irena Lagator Pejović is a visual artist particularly interested in, she says, inconspicuous and paradoxical situations, linguistic and systemic constructions, which seem to be irrelevant.
Analyzing and elaborating on them, she treats urgent issues of our time concerning the environment, system instability, fragility of human existence, memory and history.
"That's why in my works I deal with issues of social responsibility and its visibility and functionality in everyday life. By encouraging audience participation and empathy towards these topics, I make visible how the present is shaped and how it communicates with our senses", explains the artist who uses the paradoxes that arise during shifts in social systems, especially in a system based on capitalism.
Irena Lagator Pejović represented Montenegro at the 55th Biennale of Art in Venice in 2013 with the solo exhibition "Thinking with a Picture", and in addition, she presented herself at several exhibitions in the country and abroad, and exhibited collectively. The previous year, she presented herself at the Montenegrin Art Salon "13. novembar" where she presented socially engaged work, spatial installation "Where is the monument?".
Lagator Pejović is an assistant professor at the University of Donja Gorica in Podgorica, where she is employed.
Bonus video:
