Aleksandrija AJDUKOVIĆ

Modern human resources management tendencies in the world are moving towards a larger mobility of the work force, with the basic idea that potential workers should move from the low-demand areas to the high-demand ones in order to minimise unemployment in ideal conditions. The leaders of this idea are the Chinese driven by the national policy of the People’s Republic of China which encourages them to emigrate by donating certain financial support. They come to our country among other places. Their work ethics is most transparent in the shopping mall in the 70th precinct, New Belgrade.

Among other things, the shopping mall in the 70th precinct is one of the largest wholesale objects in the Balkans. Not only local „boutique-owners“, but people from the entire region come to Belgrade daily in order to buy goods from the Chinese and sell them in their own countries for significantly lower prices. The shop-owners and workers are in the boutiques around the clock in order to make more money.

The yuppie style is the embodiment of a successful businessman. The word yuppie was coined from the English words Young Urban Professional. At first, the term was used to denote young people in their late twenties and early thirties, but today it is also used for the middle-aged people. Yuppies are the people who wear shirts, jackets and ties, who tend to keep the jobs which bring them an income sufficient to place them in the upper-middle class. The term yuppie was created in the early 80s as an ironic echo to the early hippies who refused the world of materialistic values.

Are the Chinese the yuppies of the future?!  

This work consists of the video and the photographs made in the filming process. A Chinese man, living and working in Belgrade walks around the city, goes to the Hugo Boss and Pun Kuffer stores while the stylist keeps styling him and a photographer shooting to the background of the techno minimal number Everybody Loves Ollie by Tyger Skin. The atmosphere evokes the Fashion TV photo shoots.  

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Aleksandrija AJDUKOVIĆ was born in 1975 in Osijek. She graduated at the “BK” Academy of Arts in Belgrade, the department of Photography, in the class of professor Milan Aleksić. As of 2005 she is the member of ULUS, and since 2006 she has the status of an independent artist. She is currently on her Master’s studies in Novi Sad, in the class of Đorđe Odanović. She was the guest student of Marina Gržinić in the class of post-conceptual artistic practice at the Viennese Academy of Art. She was this and last year’s finalist of the Mangelos award and the winner of the Henkel Art Award for young artists in 2005 and 45th October Salon. This year she will be taking part in the UnideeCittadellarte art workshop in Biella, Italy. Through the portraits of passers-by she captures the phenomena of modern life and its daily reflections on the world of fashion, pop-culture and lifestyle of (non)urban areas in an elaborated and humoristic way.

Contact: ajdukovic.aleksandrija(at)gmail.com