Reinstatement
multimedia installation
six-channel sound installation, wall installation of 108 A4 sheets of paper
variable dimensions
2018
The work Reinstatement was exhibited at the 57th October Salon. In 2017, the artist spent two months in New York on a residency, where visiting museums and galleries was one of her main activities. Intrigued by the discrepancy between the texts about the exhibitions and the exhibitions themselves, she began collecting accompanying texts, press releases, artists’ and curators’ statements about various exhibitions and other art events and other accompanying printed material, with the intention to understand how the art market functioned there, but also globally. Before long, she decided to make a work from the collected material upon her return to Belgrade and, in order collect it as soon as possible, intensified her visits to exhibitions.
In the process of creating the work Reinstatement, the goal was to ponder on the relationship between the text and the work of art, between the positions of the curator and the artist, and the role and influence of the art market on the world of art. The work consists of two segments: the first part is a recording of her uttering the results of the analysis of the frequency of words, and the second part is a wall installation consisting of printed material collected during her two-month stay in New York. These texts, mostly printed on plain A4 office paper, are in most cases well written and very political. On the other hand, the works of art are quite formal, modernist and almost shy. Although there is a great incidence of the terms “unique”, “original”, “political”, “social”, “critical” in the texts, it is very difficult to notice these qualities in the works themselves. The work is also an invitation to the audience to research in the exhibited material, as well as to re-examine their own position of the recipients of verbal and visual messages and the effects of these messages on their perception and behaviour.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-354/14.10.2019.
Inventory No. 1657
Photo: Courtesy the artist
Selected Bibliography:
57th October Salon, The Marvellous Cacophony. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2018
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jelena Mijić (1989, Novi Sad, Serbia) graduated in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. She works in a variety of media, from painting and photography, through video, to multimedia installations, and focuses mainly on the topics of randomness, play and mistakes in art, the participation of the audience and casual passers-by, the authorship and authority of the artist’s personality and the relationship between art theory and making art. She is a member of the Belgrade Raw Art Photography Collective. Her works have been presented at numerous solo and group exhibitions in the country and abroad. Since 2013, she has been part of the organizing team of MultiMadeira, an international residency programme, taking place on the Portuguese island of Madeira. Since 2017, a member of the editorial board of the Sceniranje radio show, which deals with the art and cultural scene in Serbia. A winner of the Dimitrije Bašićević Mangelos Award, given to young visual artists; an alumnus of RU unlimited in New York and Sound Development City artist expedition. More information at https://cargocollective.com/jela