Conceived through a selection of works as a sort of overview of previous artistic engagements of Lagator and Micić’s artistic engagements, alongside their recent productions, the exhibition follows the primary research focuses and creative processes of the artists, whose practices are thematically linked by questions around various Anthropocene impacts on urban, social, and cultural landscapes.

Through explorations of the social and political implications of matter and materials within everyday, public, and private spheres, the artists problematize a series of deeper, complex manifestations of contemporary global systemic and biodiversity crises. The artists treat the phenomenon of materiality both as a medium — a bearer and exponent of socioeconomic relations and ideological content — and as a creative tool embodying specific qualitative and formal characteristics and potential. For Lagator and Micić, collecting and archiving materials they work with is particularly important, as it enables continuous examination and opens them up to further readings and visual interpretations. Their works, realized across a range of visual expressions from paintings and objects to installations and site-specific interventions, are often formally structured and resolved through accumulated elements or fragments of various industrial raw materials, ready-made objects, and artifacts. The size and seriality of these works emphasize their fundamental qualities of widespread use and consumption, activating meaning and narrative in the viewer within a complex network of value-laden and associative connotations and references, deliberately and symbolically embedded in each material. Grids, painted fields, vertical-dynamic structures, packaging remnants, fiscal transaction receipts, organic and synthetic pigments, and yarns are just some of the components of visual forms and spatial situations through which the artists introduce the story of the entanglements of economic, social, and affective relations in today’s rapidly accelerating capitalist world. The works exhibited in the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art investigate, among other things, how inequalities in global standards and regulations in the food and pharmaceutical industries can affect consumer awareness and responsibility, the environment, or serve as a demarcation line between sustainable and extractive economies. They also examine how visual representation and technological processes shape the reception of products and their content, as well as the post-transition status of former symbols of modernist architecture and of cultural democratization. Lagator and Micić’s artistic practices bring subtle critical reflections and acts of confrontation with numerous questions concerning the effects and consequences imposed by capitalist logic on individuals and communities in everyday life, including geo-economic and class stratifications, exploitation, and extinction—all hidden behind the perfidious masks of neoliberal economic and technological progress.

Irena Lagator Pejović (b. 1976, Cetinje) is a visual artist, art theorist, and associate professor at the University of Donja Gorica, Podgorica. Active in the Montenegrin, regional, and international art scenes since 2000, her work is represented in the collections of notable public institutions including FRAC Marseille, France; Villa Pacchiani, Italy; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro; the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska in Banja Luka; The Money Museum in Belgrade; the National Library of Montenegro; and the National Museum of Montenegro. She represented Montenegro with the solo exhibition Image Think at the 55th Venice Biennale. In 2022, she was one of the seven recipients of the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts, awarded at the 4th Cetinje Biennale.

https://irenalagator.net/

Jelena Micić (b. 1986, Knjaževac) holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2020), where they studied in the Department of Textual Sculpture (mentor Heimo Zobernig). They also hold a master’s degree in philosophy (2012), and they completed undergraduate studies in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures (2010) at the University of Belgrade. Micić is the recipient of the Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos Award (2021); the Würdigungspreis der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien for Best Final Works (2020); the Ö1 Talentestipendium Bildende Kunst (2018); and the kültür gemma! award (2018) in Vienna. Micić’s works are held in the Austrian Federal Collection and the City of Vienna’s collection. From 2021 to 2025, Micić served as artistic director of WIENWOCHE, a festival of art and activism.

https://www.jelenamicic.com/

Curated by: Miroslav Karić

The realization of the exhibition was supported by:

  • Austrian Cultural Forum Belgrade
  • Austrian Cultural Forum Washington
  • Ministry of Culture and Media Montenegro

We would also like to thank:

  • City Library “Vladislav Petković Dis”, Čačak
  • National Library “Dr Đorđe Natošević”, Inđija
  • Library “Vlada Aksentijević”, Obrenovac
  • National Library and Reading Room “Njegoš”, Cetinje
  • Pier DiCarlo