Nina Đurđević, “Self-sens(ibl)e”

The Spot Gallery and the Office for Photography invite you to the opening of the exhibition Self-sens(ibl)e by an artist Nina Đurđević, which will be held on Monday, 7th October 2024, at 7:00 p.m.  The workshop on (self-) expression through the mediums of photography and poetry will take place at the Spot Gallery on Thursday, 24th October, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. The exhibition will remain open until Thursday, 31st October 2024.

 

 

Long exposure

Scrolling through Facebook on 22 June 2021, who among us stopped at the sight of a switched-off ceiling lamp as a bisector of the square of a cell phone photo, the shade tangentially immersed under the dividing line between the ceiling and the wall in between loose wires, its plant branches dynamizing the geometric lines of the composition in grey shades of white – a discrete pictorial parable about potential light? Did we read the accompanying text about the photographer’s relationship to her medium in everyday life, “at parties”, her paraphrase of the old tale about the artist and their distance, the need for filtering out experiences of the world? How long did we linger there before our restless fingers scrolled past, our eyes rushing after them? Did we manage to leave a trace of our reaction in the form of an emoji or comment? Did we immediately forget that encounter, or do we still remember it today?

Spontaneously and without a hint of self-importance, through her occasional Facebook posts, Nina Đurđević has been building a distinctive textual and pictorial poetics since 2021. In posts that remain in the shadowy zone between statement and address, she touches upon the things that exhilarate or distress her, revealing what she sees and observes in everyday life. Nina records reminders of sorts, “to chronicle”, but also to release something, “get it out of her system”, onto a network where all of us speak – if we do not stay silent – to no one and to everyone all at once.

Nina enters this ambivalent public sphere offering that which is personal yet not private, the anecdotal overflowing with the universal. The images she captures with a handy camera is regularly as captivating as her professional works. Where does intuition end and skill begin, where does skill turn into talent, talent into art? On the other hand, the text fascinates us in a completely different way: the raw fragility of entirely liberated language that refuses to compromise with the standard, saying what it means as it thinks it, on the fly. Patchy, jagged, poetic, using made-up words and surprising syntagms, syntactic dislocations. The author does not shy away from superfluousness or unexpected shortcuts, she expresses all of her vacillations on form: “is it beautiness or beautifulness, because I know it is beauty”, and concerns about content: “I know these writings of mine are sometimes maudlin/ perhaps bland/ maybe naïve…”.

Nina Đurđević exposes herself vulnerably and bravely – far from the selfie mode, from the staging of her own or someone else’s self. There are no self-portraits or portraits here. There is no plot. The picture and text are a testimony of a state or event in a short loop spinning (in)to infinity. Snapshots leads to a paradox: most often it seems we are looking at a long-exposure shot in which there is no movement. In a constant stream of ephemeral content to which we expose ourselves in the social network, we suddenly become calm, transmute ourselves into pure presence.

Akin to the exhibition of content, our exposure to content in a gallery space takes on a new dimension. It requires a new/old quality of focus and dedication, a slowness we have grown unaccustomed to, an intimacy from which we shy away elsewhere, and here, commit to. Reproduced on canvases, the screen captures extend the paradox: the green dot of the author’s presence on Facebook at the time of the screenshot both disorients and focuses us: Nina is online for us and registers our presence – she is the focal point of a collective that creates and is self-producing. “Who cares what anyone thinks?”, she once asked in conversation. That question can be answered by each of us here, we can answer it together.

Vlatka Valentić

 

Nina Đurđević (Brežice, 1980) is a cinematographer and photographer, having completed her graduate studies in Film and Television Camera at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, and a Master’s program in Photography at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. She is a member of ULUPUH, the Croatian Association of Independent Artists, and an active member of the artistic organization Četveroruka.

She has been exhibiting regularly since 1998 and has so to date held over fifty solo and group exhibitions in Zagreb, Samobor, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Bordeaux, Pula, Split, Poreč, Sarajevo, Osijek, Zadar, Makarska and other cities. Her works from the Object(ive) series are kept in the holdings of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb. In collaboration with playwright Tomislav Zajec, she co-created a book of drama texts and photographs, Partings (2013), while her co-authored projects include Space_Time_Author (French Pavilion, Zagreb, 2018) – a group exhibition she curated with photography historian and curator Iva Prosoli, as well as experimental dance performances In a Space Without (2014) and From Terror. Being. Layering. Attempt 128 (Organ vida Festival, Zagreb, 2014). Her photos have been published in the magazines Kretanje, Gloss, Croatia Airlines, Quorum, Oris, as well as in most weekly and daily publications in Croatia.

As a photographer, videographer and curator, she has been working professionally with several art organisations for many years – Antisezona, Četveroruka, Poco Loco, 21:21, Divert, Grupa Kugla, K-zona, Kik Melone, Protufilm, KIC Zagreb, De Facto, Dance Theatre Ljubljana, Zagreb Dance Center, Zagreb Dance Company.

 

Related events:

• Guided exhibition tour and a conversation with the author, 7th October 2024, 7:30 p.m., The Spot Gallery

• Workshop on (self-)expression through the mediums of photography and poetry, 24th October, 7:00 p.m.

 

Opening hours of the Spot Gallery

Mon – Fri 16 – 20 or by appointment

 

The exhibition is supported by Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb, and Kultura Nova Foundation.

 

This post is also available in: Croatian