Irena Lagator Pejović

works

There is Already a Feeling of a Flow

2022 –

36 graphite pencil drawings of the taxonomy of the art collection of the non-aligned countries in Podgorica intertwined with names of living organisms, trees and plants from the park surrounding the gallery, ongoing series

450 x 220 cm

42 x 29,7 cm, each drawing

Courtesy if the artist.

Exhibitions/Venues: Irena Lagator Pejović, Blurred Landscapes, Petrović Njegoš Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art in cooperation with the Laboratory - art collection of the non-aligned countries, Podgorica, Montenegro, curated by Karolina Majewska-Güde, 2022.

Photo: Photo: Duško Miljanić, Irena Lagator Pejović

In the series of drawings There is Already a Feeling of a Flow and In the process-oriented work Symbiotic Collection, as part of her Blurred Landscapes solo exhibition, the artist highlights a taxonomy of the art collection of the non-aligned countries and expands it by incorporating names of living organisms, trees and plants from the park surrounding the gallery. Through this radical gesture the artist draws our attention to the materiality of the collected objects and reconnects them conceptually and performatively with the natural environment.

The research exhibition Blurred Landscapes examines the affective heritage and possible futures of the utopia of peaceful coexistence championed by the Non-Aligned Movement and materialized, among others in a collection of the former Art Gallery of the Non-Aligned Countries “Josip Broz Tito”. It activates the idea of symbiotic living through the conceptual and performative engagement with the art collection of the non-aligned countries. The exhibition offers the embodied view of the NAM legacy and its decolonial practices, and its expansion through artistic engagement with objects, ideas, broken developments and the surrounding nature of the mentioned collection. The exhibition consists of two parts, an intervention on the pathway in the park and three artworks in the space of the Foundation.

NAM was initiated by Yugoslavia in 1961 as an alternative political alliance between countries of the Global South that refused to take sides in the Cold War conflict. Solidarity between the non-aligned countries concerned mainly political and economic exchanges. But NAM was also a cultural project that enabled a circulation of objects and an exchange of and between artists and cultural workers in the Global South. The material aspect of this collaboration and exchange provided an opportunity to access different cultures without alienating and hierarchizing them. The collection of the former gallery founded in Podgorica in 1984 preserves the materiality of this political project of the non-aligned, functioning as an embodiment of horizontal, non-hierarchical culture of collecting based often on the practice of donation and gift. It is also a place of aligned connections between different modernisms and modernities. The collection was a part of the daily life of Titograd’s (present day Podgorica) citizens, until the dissolution of Yugoslavia. In 1995 it was integrated into Center for Contemporary Arts of Montenegro. (Karolina Majewska-Güde)