Vienna Contemporary 2022

Julija Zaharijević at Eugster || Belgrade Vienna Contemporary, booth B04

Julija Zaharijević’s practice deals with the perpetual circulation of images: their origin, their values and symbolism, and how these aspects change depending on context. She works in various media, such as sculpture, writing and painting; however, the medium that inspires a big portion of her artistic process is performance, with which Julija has an ongoing relationship of questioning and reinvention.

In one of her textual pieces (35 Years Later, 2020), Julija notes that she no longer understands her initial desire to perform, as it sometimes seemed that its sole purpose was to expose her able-bodied cis female self in an all-too-familiar game of conscious self-exploitation. Yet, this same observation can be found anew in Julija’s view of artworks as objects with specific added values — values they acquire once they enter the context of presentation. Here, performance is seen as a quality used to describe machines or objects as well as humans (performance as endurance, or as capacity). As Olamiju Fajemisin points out: “[…] Zaharijević’s newest constructions achieve resistance to traditional performative modes by offering a refreshed treatise on the discourse on representation and identity in contemporary art: opting to exploit context, rather than the self”.

Julija Zaharijević’s Cabbage series is one that makes this balance between context and the self so precarious. The role of the European cabbage replicas is essentially to “perform” as artworks, provoking our perception of what is real, what is realistic and when those categories begin or cease to matter. In the post-pandemic era that we’re in, the question of truth and reality seems more pertinent than in the past couple decades. Yet, Julija’s work does not really ask “what is real”, but “what couldbe real”, or “what performs as real”. In her own words, these cabbages perform to be artworks that are even decorative, reminiscent of flowers — a motif traditionally used to symbolise beauty.

In that sense, and going back to the frantic circulation of images mentioned in the beginning, Julija continuously asks for some kind of real; even if it’s real representation. We could argue that cheap agricultural produce is, indeed, beautiful in
the era of upcoming recession, and that its performance in this situation is real. Perhaps there is no need to compare them to flowers.

These pieces are accompanied by two other series: The Fly Orgy drawings and an ongoing series of scans. Flies came as an inspiration as yet another “object” in the eyes of sentient beings, an annoying one at that. Interestingly, it is their presence — their buzzing, random flying or even very subtle moving on a surface — that is used as a pattern in films or other moving-image pieces, in scenes where the subject seems still, but the viewers should understand that time is still passing. Flies underline the desperate human battle with time, but Julija’s comic depiction of their impossible, anthropomorphic sexual encounters underlines the absurdity of this struggle. In a sense, these works bring mortality and libido together.

Finally, the scans that take form of print on silk bring the reality of the human and non-human onto the same plane — that of a scanning machine. For this presentation, Julija is showing an octopus (the animal often understood and portrayed as otherworldly, in literature, theory and art), alongside a patch of human body hair that has naturally arranged itself into a spiral. There is something very strange about this spiral arrangement, something super-real, which presents another see-saw of perception: “nature is so precise that it sometimes looks fake” versus “this fake performs so well, that it looks natural / real”.

Natalija Paunić

Julija Zaharijević (1991) is based between Berlin and Vienna. Her recent solo shows include Oh no! The View at Georg Kargl Permanent, Vienna, Silver Lane at Alienze, Vienna and the soon-upcoming Modern Painting at BBBerlin (Berlin). Her recent group shows include SYSTEMA, with Pina (Vienna) in Marseille, Burn The Groves, Löwengasse, Cologne, The Leftovers hosted by Angharad Williams & Gianmaria Andreetta, Kevin Space, Vienna, and the soon-upcoming Hyper at Callirrhoë, Athens.