This exhibition is dedicated to the city. To my city. Skopje.
The city is I and I am the city. The city is you and you are the city.
Many exhibitions and events have been and are dedicated to the way Skopje is changing and shaping. I too subtly “talk” about it, but I don’t want to just criticize or praise, I want to convey my thoughts, memories and feelings through visualisations filled with metaphors and symbols.
During the past year of thinking about this exhibition, my moving around the city has actually been active observation, noticing, search, finding, photographing, collecting, and preserving small things that, strangely enough, always had something to do with something of my own: a memory, a story or an experience.
If I generalize, then I would say that with this exhibition I “speak” of what we have experienced, of what we feel strongly, but describe with difficulty. Whether this is deliberately or unintentionally caused by whom, what and how is irrelevant. For me it is important that is does not leave you indifferent.
The choice of space is not random. I was looking for an intimate but neglected/deserted /lonely space. A space that testifies not only to the present time and presence, but also to some past times. A space that together with the works will help elaborate on the topics of transience and changeability, of volatility, but also of memory and eternity.
At the same time, the fact that this private and intimate space, for at least a few hours, becomes open and public, and then returns to its original private, intimate, and closed state, helps me play with my thoughts on personality and society: the shaping of the person by society (people or the city) and vice versa, i.e. the shaping of society (or the city) by the person.
You will notice that the works are interwoven with everyday (more or less) present (visible and tangible) things. All are found (collected/preserved/photographed) in the city, on the street or in the yard. Given by the city to me and you/us.
It may be unnecessary, but still, for the sake of easier “reading” of the works I would like to state my interpretations of the metaphors and symbols (as well as point out my own works to which I relate). However, I do not insist that they are entirely yours.
Tailoring pattern: shaping (tailoring) a person; various influences that contribute to the formation of a person (such as joining individual pieces cut according to the pattern into wearable pieces of clothing); creating one’s own or one’s own destiny; life directions
Numbers: personal/ intimate meaning and/or clarification of the visual story
Spiders: fear, protection, motherhood, knitting, tailoring, home, attack (hunting)
Ants: biting, work/labour, harmony, chills, greed, selfishness, discomfort
Snails: home, path/trail/street, spiral, infinity (Fragility of Life, 2001)
Hair elastic: a story
Sky: the future, life of thought, play (Reading the skies, 1999)
Chess: war, struggle, life, paths /streets/directions, persistence (Chess and Sheepskin, 2001; The Game, 2006; Overcrowding, 2016)
Glass: fragility, volatility, pain
Bottle: contents, memories, smells/flavours
Shadows: communication, conflict, another dimension (Shadow, 2011/13)
Sink: rinsing, cleaning
Water: information, agitation
Space 1
Slavica Janeslieva
Only Something This Small Can Be Everywhere 1
Drawing on paper and glass, 41х100х3cm, 2019
details (below)
Slavica Janeslieva
Only Something This Small Can Be Everywhere 73
Drawing on paper with дрвени бои and pins, pastiche and drawing on glass with relief outliner, 45х100х3cm, 2019
details (below)
Space 2
Slavica Janeslieva
Pain
Two photographs (45х65см.), varying dimensions, 2019
details (below)
Slavica Janeslieva
I Represent to You 1987, 1988 and 1989
Digitally processed photograph (41х100см.), three bottles with syrup and texts; varying dimensions, 2019
I Represent to You 1987, 1988 and 1989
In the basement of the house, stacked on a shelf, I store old glass bottles full of homemade juice. I can’t make myself to throw them away.
This summer I dedicated myself to reading Gospodinov. Among other things, he writes about his basement. I underlined and emphasized a bunch of words, sentences, passages, but I immediately “grabbed” the bottle that his grandfather had intended for him ever since the day of his birth: “That bottle should now be forty-four years old. If I find it and open it I will have distilled the whole of 1968… The number of sunny days during that summer, the early autumn rain, the humidity, the soil quality, the vine disease, all the history is written inside, in the glass bottle.”[1] There they are, in front of you, I present to you half evaporated 1987 and 1988 and the entire 1989. If you don’t remember, take a look in these glass bottles, full of history and records.
[1] Gospodinov, Georgi. The Physics of Sorrow, Ili-ili, Skopje, 2015, p. 168