A4 03. Edition – Maja Gjajić and Maja Flajsig / Forms of Time and Chronotopia
Solo exhibition
FROM THE PREFACE OF THE EXHIBITION
"To travel is to return", Gabriel Garcia Márquez once concluded with the last verses of his poetic meditation on travel. It is only when we return from a trip that we really realize how our systems of thinking have changed and how our perceptual apparatus has become sharper. Feeling the change that is coming, trying to preserve moments that are sometimes of formative meaning, we embody our memories. Thus, new experiences of different times and spaces permeate artistic genres such as travelogues and photographic series. This creative impulse that travel experiences encourage, Maja Gjajić explored in her work "Archive of Memories", prompted by her numerous travels that took place in the last two years. Reflecting on travel as a way of learning that in a theoretical context implies sociological, anthropological, historical and artistic considerations of the movement of people through time and space, the artist performed her works in situ, during the journeys themselves. The results of her artistic research are represented by two books by the artist, a kind of travelogues, which combine graphic prints and photographs made in alternative photographic techniques of cyanotype and Van Brown. The narrative structure of the books chronologically follows the visited destinations, i.e. visual diary notes and interpretations of various characteristics of places, times or people met and acquainted on these journeys, as well as the changes that took place within the artist herself. They are also embodied in a spatial installation that includes memorabilia collected on her travels and metal matrices whose drawing performance is related to a particular visited city and climate. Thus, in a time of limited movement, when every journey is impossible or uncertain, Maja Gjajić's work encourages us to look back at the places that have changed us, but which we have also changed.
Maja Flaissig
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE AUTHORS
Maja Gjajić (1996) completed the printmaking module at the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and projects and has won many awards. Currently, the author's more intensive work takes place in the field of graphic design and illustration, and in terms of artistic creation, the process of researching the theme of the phenomenon of travel and its implications in personal creation continues.
Maja Flajsig (1994) holds a master's degree in art history and ethnology and cultural anthropology. She works as an independent curator in Croatia and abroad. She writes art criticism, reviews and interviews. She has written for the portals Vizkultura, Kulturpunkt and Contemporary Croatian Photography, the magazine Narodna umělist and the radio show HR3 Triptych. She collaborates with the associations Office for Photography, 90-60-90 and Siva zona and the galleries Crta, CEKAO and Bernardo Bernardi in the development of discursive content and exhibition projects. She is an active member of the association 4 of the city of Dragodid, which deals with the preservation of dry stone wall heritage. Her research efforts are interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary art phenomena through visual anthropology, which are mostly related to participatory action in the community and art in public space and natural environment, especially in the context of smaller local communities.
The exhibition is financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture of the City of Zagreb.
The exhibition at the Šira Gallery can be viewed during the Gallery's working hours (Mon-Fri: 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., 6 p.m. – 8 p.m., Saturdays: 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.) until March 23, 2021.
