Darja Bajagić
For her contribution to FADE IN 2, Darja Bajagić has sourced imagery from the 1971 film W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, directed by Dušan Makavejev. The striped background of the work recalls a nearly identical backdrop that appears throughout Makavejev’s satire, which follows an ardently proletariat woman, Milena, who seduces a celebrity figure-skater resembling Joseph Stalin. The irreconcilable tension between these two figures results in Milena’s decapitation by ice skate. Printed atop the striped background is one of the first images of the Yugoslav Wars the artist recalls seeing online: an image of a bloodied female corpse that the artist associates with an updated version of Milena. Acknowledging the differences between the two Yugoslav periods of the 1970s and 1990s, Bajagić considers the work a layering of histories filtered through personal memory.
Darja Bajagić (1990, Montenegro) is an artist who lives and works in Chicago, USA. Bajagić received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2014. Her recent institutional solo exhibitions include Goregeous, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France (2020); Born Losers, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-οn-Hudson, USA (2018); Unlimited Hate, KM– Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz, Austria (2016). Selected group exhibitions have taken place at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg (2020); Futura Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic (2019); Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma, Spain (2018); Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, Lithuania (2018); LUMA Westbau, Zurich, Switzerland (2017, 2015, 2014); Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (2015); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2015); Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland (2014); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico (2014); Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), Vienna, Austria (2013). Her work has been included in the 57th October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia (2018) and the 13th Baltic Triennial of International Art, Vilnius (2018).
