la petite mort
Wood intarsia, photographs, 2017–2018
series of prints on metal and photographs (details)
The work began with photographs of clothes left on a wooden floor. I was interested in that moment before sleep, or intimacy, when we let go of ourselves, surrendering control to the unconscious or to desire. The clothes remain where they were abandoned, almost like a monument to a temporary disappearance.
I first exhibited the photographs on the gallery floor, beneath a staircase. It was the occasion of my admission to the Association of Artists of Serbia, shortly after my divorce. I had exchanged one form of belonging for another. There was something both comforting and humiliating about that transaction. Anyone attempting to step out of those clothes would have had to crawl, head lowered, before they could stand upright.
Over the following fourteen years, the work gradually changed its form. The wooden floor became a floating intarsia, assembled from untreated pieces of different woods. Its decorative geometry recalls the elaborate parquet floors of grand interiors, later imitated in bourgeois homes.
I think of la petite mort as a moment of surrender, but also as a small loss of self. The clothes are empty, yet they retain the shape of someone's presence. What remains on the floor is both an absence and a reminder of having been there.
Take all life offers you — today you are a flower, tomorrow, a withering rose.
Exhibitions
2018 – About the Vulgar, solo show, Remont Gallery, Belgrade
2006- New memmbvers, group show, Association of Artists of Serbia