Irena Lagator Pejović
Property
2014
Lambda print, 35x100 cm
Photo: Irena Lagator Pejović
The impulse of human creativity and action can give unexpectedly brilliant results even in the marginal zones of shared space, showing that every space is relevant.
The work Property documents the need of a citizen of Cetinje to beautify, decorate and, consequently, magnify and isolate from monotony the entry into his illegally built garage space, in one of the residential settlements on the periphery of the city.
But roses are usually used to decorate larger and more famous, mostly private buildings and properties. The time required for the maintenance of roses of this volume is rarely invested for decorating a space for storage purposes. The fact that in this row of garages more or less similar by their scale and aesthetics, only one garage has a double-leaf door decorated in this way renders visible the persistence of a will and feeling, as well as the need to approach the simplest daily routine action with creativity and greatest care.
In times of neoliberal global capitalism, the accent on such a modest property is read as a paradox, resistance and an attempt to critically discuss the course towards which many societies are moving today. Here we do not see the ambition of the American garage myth during the emergence of Californian IT giants that would lead to the 4th Industrial Revolution, but on the contrary: this small property glorifies the marginal, the seemingly irrelevant, and the humble construction whose illegality teaches us about the failures of our system that is able to question its sustainability.
In Property, it is the free time that is made visible and celebrated parallelly to global human labor crisis which today stretches to 24h every day of the week. It functions as a corrective and a reduction of the oversized deformation of desire for possession and property, which would restore to equality the notions of ownership and exclusion versus sharing and inclusion, as well as human use of natural resources within the context of ongoing environmental crisis.
2014
Lambda print, 35x100 cm
Photo: Irena Lagator Pejović
The impulse of human creativity and action can give unexpectedly brilliant results even in the marginal zones of shared space, showing that every space is relevant.
The work Property documents the need of a citizen of Cetinje to beautify, decorate and, consequently, magnify and isolate from monotony the entry into his illegally built garage space, in one of the residential settlements on the periphery of the city.
But roses are usually used to decorate larger and more famous, mostly private buildings and properties. The time required for the maintenance of roses of this volume is rarely invested for decorating a space for storage purposes. The fact that in this row of garages more or less similar by their scale and aesthetics, only one garage has a double-leaf door decorated in this way renders visible the persistence of a will and feeling, as well as the need to approach the simplest daily routine action with creativity and greatest care.
In times of neoliberal global capitalism, the accent on such a modest property is read as a paradox, resistance and an attempt to critically discuss the course towards which many societies are moving today. Here we do not see the ambition of the American garage myth during the emergence of Californian IT giants that would lead to the 4th Industrial Revolution, but on the contrary: this small property glorifies the marginal, the seemingly irrelevant, and the humble construction whose illegality teaches us about the failures of our system that is able to question its sustainability.
In Property, it is the free time that is made visible and celebrated parallelly to global human labor crisis which today stretches to 24h every day of the week. It functions as a corrective and a reduction of the oversized deformation of desire for possession and property, which would restore to equality the notions of ownership and exclusion versus sharing and inclusion, as well as human use of natural resources within the context of ongoing environmental crisis.
