English
The Crystal Palace of Madrid´s Retiro Park exposes until October 3rd the solo exhibition of the conceptual Bosnian artist Maja Bajevic. The installation titled continue was elaborated by the artist for the exhibition, and is the first time Bajevic exposes in Spain.
At “Continue” Bajevic builds a scaffold, a lonely podium where there is no statue. On top of that structure there are five screens that continuously play a series of videos with a play called Wende, a German word that means “turn” and refers to events that occurred with the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the consequent fall of real socialism. In the video you see people walking, suddenly they stop and turn around. Along with this, machines that produce steam symbolize the era of the Industrial Revolution. During the night slogans are projected on moving steam visiting a century of political life and changes. Vocal solo songs are performed by professional singers and apprentices that can be heard from an installation by the artist.
This conceptual work alludes to the fragmented memory of a tumultuous century, where two civil wars, revolutions and holocausts transformed the internal and external boundaries of humanity, creating dramatic twists and just as the name of the expo insinuates: it will Continue
In her recurring themes, movement and change, marks her identity derived from personal experiences in the political conflict that led to war and ended former Yugoslavia. Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia in 1967 she saw the stability of her the world brake into pieces, although during the war in Yugoslavia, she lived in Paris.
This reason leads Bajevic to transcribe in her existential anguish policies derived from the breakdowns, her life in a country that was supposed to have overcome all the ills of humanity: poverty and injustice. However, the collapse of socialism broke overnight this paradise unleashing monsters of irrationality and transforming men into mass murderers.
Hence her works are full of elements that make the ephemeral, such as steam on which she projects slogans and ideas that marked the twentieth century, which collapsed leaving only an indelible mark of those dreams of perfect worlds, represented by utopias.
Maja Bajevic with her expo “Continues” connected necessarily with the memory of the twentieth century and the vicissitudes of the XXI century, where everything is mutable, ephemeral and transitory being a product of globalization and the continuing economic crisis that forced the displacement of both populations and capital Hence her work so interesting and current.
For more information
http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/actuales/bajevic.html
Nancy Guzman
If you are intrigued by the works of Maja Bajevic and you find yourself in apartments in Madrid head to the Crystal Palace of the Retiro Park and spend a morning visiting the facility. I assure you you will not regret it.
Translated by: Marc
