“Private and/or Public”
“Private and/or Public” Soft sculpture 2021 Can we be aware of the line between private and public activity in our lives? Is that harder if the subject is the one who creates? Weaving in her room, did my grandmother ever think that by creating that piece of material on the loom, her life would go from a private to a public one (inaccessible to her at the time)? By transposing a piece of textile that I weave by hand into an object titled installation in space, I break through the thin line between the private and the public. I make the soft structure of the fabric stop, freezing it, making it hard as stone, so that the outside view can feel how it slides under my fingers, rounded and tender. The production of material on the loom is a very intimate physical moment in which energy moves harmoniously through our body and by repeating the same procedures produces a rhythmic sound with which thoughts relax. The procedure can be viewed as meditative, cathartic, but very private and intimate. Observed throughout history, weaving has been the product of those who spend most of their time at home, who take care of the family and mostly women's work. For a long time, it had the characteristic of decorative art, the one that is less valuable compared to the art produced by the big names in art history, done mostly by the male gender. As a craft or decorative art, weaving remained in the intimate zone. With its softness, colors, seductive charm, we read it as a woman's energy. When I shape such energy and publicly present it into an object, it becomes a political act. It suggests a vague line of her private and public actions, a life full of content and obligations, a departure from flexibility, and as such contextualized through an artistic act. The contemporary artist is in a very confusing situation today. Their lives are permeated with ambiguity about profession, private life and acting in both. It is very difficult as an artist to be constantly flexible and to continue with many different activities we do. In Bojana Kunst's book "Artist at Work", the author sets a modern artist as a prototype of modern flexibility and precarious work. It is precisely the absence of lines between the personal and the public that makes a work of art so close to the creation of life itself. Bojana Kunst further states: “Today, the vanishing dividing line between life and work, placed by many twentieth-century artists at the core of their emancipation tendencies is also at the center of the capitalist processes of life exploitation. It often seems that the artist is the ideal worker in contemporary capitalism; it is also no coincidence that the artistic lifestyle and exploitation of life as an endless creative process underlies the speculation on the future value of art." “Privatno i /ili Javno” -Mekana skulptura 2021 Možemo li osvestiti granicu izmedju privatnog i javnog delovanja u našim životima? Jeste li ona tim teža ako je subjekt onaj koji stvara? Da li je moja baka tokom tkanja u svojoj sobi ikada pomislila da stvaranjem tog komada materijala na razboju, njen život iz privatne svefe prelazi u javni, (njoj tada nedosupni)? Transponovanjem komada tekstila koji ručno tkam u objekat naslovljen instalacijom u prostoru, probijam tanku granicu izmedju privatnog i javnog. Mekanu strukturu tkanine zaustavljam, ledim, kamenim, kako bi spoljni pogled mogao da oseti kako ona ispod mojih prstiju, zaobljena i nežna, klizi. Produkovanje materijala na razboju je veoma prisan telesni momenat u kome se energija harmonično kroz naše telo kreće i ponavljanjem istih postupaka produkuje ritmički zvuk sa kojim se misli opuštaju. Postupa se može posmatrati i meditativnim, katarzičnim ali veoma privatnim i intimnim. Posmatrano kroz istoriju tkanje je bilo produkt onih koji većinu svog vremena provode u kući, koji brinu o porodici i pretežno ženski posao. Dugo je imao karakteristiku dekorativne umetnosti, one koja je manje vredna u odnosu na zabeležena imena istorije umetnosti, pretežno muškog pola. Kao zanat ili dekorativna umetnost ostala je u intimnoj zoni. Svojom mekoćom, bojama, zavodljivim šarmom čitamo je kao energiju žene. Kada takvu energiju pretočenu u objekat javno predstavim, ona postaje politički čin. Sugeriše na nejasnu liniju njenih privatnih i javnih delovanja, život pun sadržaja i obaveza, odhos fleksibilnosti, i kao takav kontekstualizovan kroz umetnički čin. Savremeni umetnik/umetnica se nalaze u nadasve konfuznoj situaciji danas. Njihov život je prožet nejasnoćom o profesiji, privatnom životu i delovanju u oba. Veoma je teško kao umetnik/ca biti konstantno fleksibilan i nastavljati dalje sa masom različitih aktivnosti koje radimo. U knjizi Bojane Kunst “Artist at Work” autorka postavlja modernog umetnika/cu kao prototip modernog fleksibiliteta i prekarnog rada. Upravo je odsustvo granica u ličnom i javnom ono što umetničko delo čini toliko bliskim stvaranju samog života. Bojana Kunst dalje navodi: “Today, the vanishing dividing line between life and work, placed by many twentieth-century artists at the core of their emancipation tendencies is also at the center of the capitalist processes of life exploitation. It often seems that the artist is the ideal worker in contemporary capitalism; it is also no coincidence that the artistic lifestyle and exploitation of life as an endless creative process underlies thespeculation on the future value of art."

“Audio Recording - Kitchen”
“Audio Recording - Kitchen” Audio Recording, Bojana & Jelena Fužinato 2021 https://femkanje.rs/ “All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that‘s more social, more collaborative, and more real than art.” Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship Can art and life be separated? Can we recognise the art in life (do we want to) or do we have to contextualise it for some greater good? Two artists in a situation of complete isolation, while the museums and the gallery are closed, the socialisation is impossible and overwhelmed by motherhood are trying to move the boundaries between the private and public agencies. They create a chaotic micro-world that only they believe in, which gives them hope that art will survive, that it is real and stronger than the reality surrounding them. The resulting turbulence and conflicting perspectives on femininity, feminist criticism, intellectual work, housework, and raising children are a homage to the performer’s private and public life. The question is, where does the intertwining of such perspectives lead? Is it the resistance and persistence that keeps art in life or life in art? Is the built tension between inner and outer life threatening or promising? Bojana Kunst, in her book Artist at Work, concludes: “The disappearance of the border between life and work in the late-capitalist work processes actually leads to the disappearance of possibilities for an emancipating alliance between work and life, an alliance that can take place through the constant politicizing of this difference that reveals the paradoxes of contemporary autonomy, the illusory possibilities of choice and self-organization ofone‘s life.” We can conclude that the contextualised paradox of contemporary autonomies is perhaps more realistic than art, in the way Bishop suggests. “Audio Recording, January 2021” Is A Continuation Of The Work “Kitchen”, Recorded In 2013 And A Sort Of Sketch For The Future Version Of This Performance. Audio Recordings Are Samples From Everyday Life (Cooking, Pumping Milk, Washing Dishes, Making Coffee, Taking Care Of Children), And Simultaneously Focusing On Gender Issues. These Passages Of Those Moments Of Life That Are Determined By Biology And Social Construction Are Enhanced By Reading Quotations From The Following Sources: Judith Butler, Notes Toward A Performative Theory Of Assembly, Usa, Harvard University, 2018; Beatrice Von Bismarck, Benjamin Mayer-kahmer, Cultures Of The Curatorial 3 / Hospitality: Hosting Relations In Exhibitions, Potsdam, 2016; Bojana Kunst, Artist At Work, Proximity Of Art And Capitalism, Winchester And Washington, 2015; Griselda Pollock, Vision And Difference: Feminism, Femininity And Histories Of Art, London And New York, 2003; Griselda Pollock, Encounters In The Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space And The Archive, London And New York, 2007; Maura Reilly, Curatorial Activism: Towards An Ethics Of Curating, London 2018; Berger, John, Why Look At Animals? Penguin, 2009: Hanna Arendt, Totalitarizam, Artprint Novi Sad 2013; Zaharijević, Adriana, Ko je pojedinac?: Genealoško propitivanje ideje građanina. Karpos, 2014; Stokowski, Margarete, Untenrum frei. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2018; Woolf, Virginia, and Barrett Michèle, A Room of One’s Own; and, Three Guineas. Penguin Classics, 2019; Acaso, María, “From Art Education To Art Education: Making The Education Revolution Into The Visual Arts Teaching Arena.” Wat’s Next? Ein Reader, edited by Torsten Meyer, and Gila Kolb.Koaped Verlag, München, 2015; Hormann, Elizabeth, and Guóth-Gumberger Márta, Stillen. GRÄFE UND UNZER Verlag GmbH, 2014. “Zvučna instalacija Kuhinja” -Audio snimak, Bojana & Jelena Fužinato 2021 “All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that‘s more social, more collaborative, and more real than art.” Claire BISHOP, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship Postoji li granica koja razgranicava umetnost od života? Možemo li je prepoznati (želimo li to) ili je kontekstualizovati za neko veće dobro? Dve umetnice u situaciji potpune izolacije, zatvorenim muzejima, galerijama, onemogućene u ostvarivanju društvenih kontakta, sa decom i svim kućnim poslovima, pokušavaju da pomere granice izmedju privatnog i javnog. Stvaraju haotični mikro svet u koji samo one veruju, koji ih opušta i daje nadu da umetnost opstaje, da je stvarna i jača od realnosti koja ih okružuje. Nastala zbrkana i suprostavljena perspektiva o ženstvenosti, feminističkoj kritici, intelektualnom radu, kućnim poslovima, gajenju dece, predstavlja odu o privatnom i javnom životu izvodjačica. Postavlja se pitanje kuda vodi prepletanje ovakvih perspektiva? Jeste li to vid upornosti i istrajnosti da opstane umetnosti u životu ili živott u umetnosti, ili privatna i javna svera naših života onemogućava razgraničavanje pomenutih. Bojana Kunst u svojoj knjizi Artist at Work zaključuje veoma zanimljivo: “The disappearance of the border between life and work in the late-capitalist work processes actually leads to the disappearance of possibilities for an emancipating alliance between work and life, an alliance that can take place through the constant politicizing of this difference that reveals the paradoxes of contemporary autonomy, the illusory possibilities ofchoice and self-organization of one‘s life.” Možemo doći do zaključka da je kontekstualizovani paradoks savremenih autonomija možda realniji od umetnosti, na način na koji to Bishop sugeriše. U zvučnoj instalaciji “Kuhinja” dve umetnice izvode akciju svojih svakodnevnih aktivnosti (kuvaju, pumpaju mleko, peru sudove, kuvaju kafu, čuvaju decu...) i uporedu čitaju citate iz navedenih tekstova: Judith BUTLER,...

“Virdžina”
“Virdžina” A series of art installations "“Virdžina”" as a synthesis of different elements, has been made during five years of research on the abovementioned concept / Virginia, Tobelia, Sworn Virgins /, in the period from 2016 to 2021. The first time I heard about the term“Virdžina”(Virgin) was at the end of the last century, in a film directed by Srdjan Karanovic, filmed in 1991 in Yugoslavia. The story describes Stevan, a young heir to the family cursed by the fact that there are too many female offspring. Stevan's own family condemns him to live as a boy, although he was born as a girl. His family is actually following the custom of "swearing virgins" ("virgin" or "tobelia") to avoid condemnation of society because it has exclusively female offspring. There are various reasons for becoming Virginia, and Stevans case from the abovementioned film is just one of them. It can also be from purely personal incentives, when young girls do not have the identity of the sex and the gender with which they were born. Also, there are some cases where grieving for a lost partner, women took the vow to be Virgin, so they could escape potential arranged and unwanted marriage. In this way, they commit themselves to eternal virginity, which separates them from the category of the woman, does not include them into the category of a man, but certainly creates the possibility of permanent exclusion from the obligation to be a woman. With the status of Virginia, women are certainly gaining freedom of movement in a public domain, but not so much in a private, hidden area of women's life. In all these cases, I analyze the patriarchal situation in the mountainous rural areas of the Balkans: Northern Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, where the Virdžina phenomenon is still present. Written documents testify that the existence of a phenomenon dates back to the 1860, and in a recent Vice documentary we can see that there are still Virdžina, of course in a much smaller number than before, and that they represent the oldest third gender in Europe. The visual vocabulary that I use to transpose this phenomenon in visual speech uses elements that symbolically depict the private and public domain in the life of a woman / man / Virgin. It is based on the motifs of the mountain parts of the Balkans, as a symbol of the public and free movement. As a reflection of the way of life in remote places and the patriarchate that is still present in them. The chosen motif is portrayed on a media that is traditionally related to women's handicrafts and the private sphere of her life: embroidery, sewing, batik painting textiles, decorative painting of fabrics, needles and kitchen cloths. Thus, these two areas intertwine, blur and postulate the gender and gender positions, which in the case of Virginia are socially constructed. (In this text I am using the information found in the scientific works Suzana Milevski, Predrag Šarčević and Marko Kokotec, Virdžina films Srđan Karanović and "The Last Balkan Virginia" Vice Serbia). “Virdžina” -Serija umetničkih instalacija “Virdžina” kao sinteza razlišitih elemenata, izvedena je kroz petogodišnje istraživanje pomentog pojma /Virdžina, Tobelija, Sworn Virgins/, u periodu od 2016. do 2021. godine. Pojam Virdžina se u mom životu pojavljuje krajem proteklog stoleća, upoznavanjem sa istoimenim filmom reditelja Srđana Karanovića, snimljenog 1991. u Jugoslaviji. Uz feministicko čitanje pomenutog filma u doktorskoj disertaciji Suzane Milevske, ulazim u istraživanje fenomena rodne zamene koja je patrijahalno podstaknuta i izgrađena. Priča opisuje Stevana, mladog naslednika porodice koja je ukleta zbog toga što ima previše ženske dece. Stevana sopstvena porodica osuđuje da živi kao dečak, iako je rođen(a) kao devojčica. Njegova porodica zapravo prati običaj „zakletih devica” („virgina” ili „tobelija”) kako bi izbegla osudu društva zbog toga što ima isključivo žensko potomstvo. Različiti su razlozi postajanja Virdžinom, a slučaj Stevana iz pomenutog filma je samo jedan od njih. Ona može biti i iz čisto ličnih pobuda, u slučaju kada mlade devojke ne poseduju identitet pola i roda sa kojim su rodjene. Takodje, ima primera da iz žalosti za izgubljenim partnerom žene ostaju zavetovane Virdzine, dok može biti i bekstvo od ugovorenog i neželjenog braka. One se tim činom zavetuju na večno devičanstvo, što ih odvaja od kategorije žene, ne dovodi u kategoriju muškarca, ali zasigurno stvara mogućnost za trajno isključivanje iz obaveze biti ženom. Statusom Virdžine žene zasigurno dobijaju slobodu kretanja u javnoj oblasti, a ne privatoj, skrivenoj oblasti ženskog zivota. U svim ovom primerima analiziram patrijahanu situaciju u brdskim ruralnim predelima balkana: severne Albanije, Kosova i Crne Gore, za koje se fenomenologija Virdžina vezuje. Pisani dokumenti svedoče da je postojanje fenomena zabeleženo od 1860. godine, a u dokumentarcu nedavno snimljenom od produkcije Vice, uočavamo da ih ima i dalje, naravno u znatno manjem broju nego pre, ali da su zasigurno najstariji treći rod evrope. Vizuelni rečnik kojim transponujem ovaj fenomen u likovni govor se služi elementima koji simbolično prikazuju privatnu i javnu oblast u životu jedne žene/muškarca/Virdžine. Zasnovan je na motivima kršovitih predela Balkana, kao simbol javnog, te slobodnog kretanja jedne osobe. Kao promišljanje o načinu života u zabačenim mestima i patrijahatu koji je u njima i dalje prisutan. Izabrani motiv izvodim medijima koji su tradicionalno vezani za ženske ručne radove i privatnu sferu njenog života: vez, tkanje, šivenje, batik farbanje tekstila, dekorativno oslikavanje tkanina, igle i kuhinjske krpe. Time se ove dve oblasti prepliću, zamućuju i postavljaju upitim pozicije roda i pola, koje je u primeru Virdžine društveno iskonstruisan. ( U ovom tekstu se služim informacijama pronađenim u naučnim radovima Suzane Milevski, Predraga Šarčevića i Marka Kokoteca; filmovima „Virdžina“ Srđana Karanovića i „Poslednje balkanske Virdžine“ Vice Srbija ).