MAJA DJORDJEVIC: HOPE AND REBIRTH
Carl Kostyál presents HOPE AND REBIRTH by Belgrade-born artist Maja Djordjevic. This is the artists second solo exhibition with the gallery, following her debut at Carl Kostyál London in 2020.
February 23 – March 16, 2024
While building her new body of work, now on show at Carl Kostyál, Maja Djordjevic felt as though she was watching the world fall apart. A uniquely porous individual, Djordjevic internalises others’ pain and experiences it as if it were her own. This quality, both precious and burdensome, often leaves the artist feeling powerless. In the spring, she wrote in her journals.
These longings are unfailingly manifested through Djordjevic’s iconic, nude female figure – a character she affectionately refers to as “My Girl”. Across the six works on show, Djordjevic’s girl takes on a multitude of novel embodiments each emblemising the promises held within the show’s title. More reminiscent of the symbol for a woman than any real individual, Djordjevic’s figures are deployed as relatable storytelling devices. In their lack of specificity, they invite the viewer to find identification and empowerment: like Djordjevic’s girl, they too can be the hero.
Another symbol, a leitmotif that grows throughout the exhibition, is the lily. From antiquity to the present day, flowers have been a constant subject of artistic interest: botanical illustration dates back to the work of Greek physician Krateus in the 1st century B.C., Dutch painters of the 17th century imbued bouquets with connotations of life or death, and world-renowned modernist Georgia O’Keeffe transformed depicting the folds of a petal into a deeply radical gesture.
‘When it’s time you might not want to go’ looks to the flower most famously depicted by Claude Monet – the Nymphaeaceae (Water Lily). Painting little but the water garden at his Giverny estate in Normandy, Monet worked tirelessly on his Water Lilies Series for more than three decades. In 1918, he took the decision to bequeath a significant number to the French state, intending to finish and sign them on “Victory Day”.
This piece, featuring a floating mass of girls reaching up towards the sky from within a seemingly endless lake, sees Djordjevic resurrecting these flowers’ associations with peace to call for a contemporary global armistice. Nestled amongst the women, sprigs of Nerine sarniensis (Guernsey Lily) appear triumphantly. Emerging in autumn despite harsh conditions, these magnificent blooms are paragons of hope and resilience.
Maja Djordjevic’s solo exhibition, ‘HOPE AND REBIRTH’ is thus best understood as a whispered battle cry – encased within deceptively bright and seemingly jubilant paintings is a call to drop arms and hold one another’s hands instead. Created against the backdrop of past and present incidences of war and genocide, inequality and prejudice, ecological devastation and rampant consumerism, this presentation is the artist’s most understanded to date – foregoing staging and sculptural elements, in ‘HOPE AND REBIRTH’ Djordjevic wields a new confidence.