sreda, 26. november 2008

S I T U A K T C I J A

Maja Slavec dedicated one whole year to the artistic project S i t u a k t c i j a. The artist followed the life of some women in them everyday activities, taking part in the simple actions of the day like privileged observer, but not intrusive. So we can see women portrayed in interior spaces of the house like kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms; but also during passing moments from room to room, or external from housing spaces, public spaces. In every case, the woman is alone.

Maja Slavec inquires into the real life and capture the situation (in Slovenian situacija) in which the woman is alone with herself. These are instants of intimate life (akt, naked; also in a broad sense) in which emerge subtly femininity and eroticism. Here, however, is completely absent any intention that leads to think of a voyeuristic look into intimacy. The woman isn’t a potential erotic object for outer observer.

In fact the artist deepens the topic of the self-perception of femininity and eroticism. And she speaks of the fear to loose this self-perception. In her photos, consequently, we can recognize a latent sadness. In this way the photographic memory of S i t u a k t c i j a records also sadness, which has a poetic value.

The artist specifies “There’s a sort of poetry in being sad. Sadness is poetic”. If poetry has a certain inclination for emptiness [Iosif Brodskij], S i t u a k t c i j a describes this inclination tactfully, succeeding in express exactly the poetry, not only the semantic, of the situations.

Just for this inclination to poetry built in the project concept, Maja Slavec photography, although portray real life moments, is not purely realistic like greater part of contemporary situation photography: it meet precise formal and aesthetic fundamental rules (composition, light) maintaining yet the absence of artifice in the representation of reality.

The final result is a photographic series in which there isn’t narrative will.

S i t u a k t c i j a brings in itself the quality of immediacy of the real life.


Michele Drascek

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