Kunsthuis SYB

Jelena Andjelovski and Paula Müller met in December 2013 in Zagreb. The two artists were invited to interact in the frame of a workshop for Pogon Jedinstvo, together with other artists from Serbia, Croatia and Germany. They discovered their shared interest for the message that lies between language and image and decided to work together. In SYB they continue their cooperation under the name ‘Extreme Lives’.

 

Jelena Andjelovski (b. Belgrade, Serbia, 1980) studied law at the University of Belgrade and dramaturgy at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. She is a feminist activist and started to work for the international network “Women in Black” in Belgrade in 2002. In the following years she worked as a teacher, program coordinator, organizer and spokesperson of other organizations such as SOS Telephone for Women and Children Victims of Violence, Incest Trauma Center Belgrade, Autonomous Women’s Center Belgrade and Novi Sad Lesbian Organization.
Since 2009 Andjelovski developed several programs for youth CK13 in Novi Sad. She is also the author of numerous plays and performances.

Paula Müller (b. Trier, 1977) is an artist who lives and works in Berlin.

 

Paula:

“After intense conversations about Jelenas history and experience during the war and her engagement as a young feminist in her country, we decided to continue our dialogue. I was interested in her approach, and the way she lives feminism today. My own image of this movement is influenced by German history and the development of certain professional figures, that printed the word feminism into the heads of German women and men. Jelena brought an enlightening aspect into my understanding of being a feminist today. At the age of 19 she decided out of necessity to be active in a freedom- movement in her country. 

          We met again to start a collaboration in January 2014 in Berlin. Writing and drawing in conversation. How do our artistic languages interact and add up to something more than solely pictural or textual understanding of a persons life or destiny. 

          For me the question is- what is there to be understood- what can I express- on another level- that the other medium is not able to? We got touched by heavy biographies of women. Old women, women who fought. During the war, who had a vision and a strong political aim. Who have a hard view on love. Extreme love. Women in extreme situations- confrontation with the outside world.

          In SYB we will work on these histories. We collected true stories of women and work about the way how to transmit these stories in word and image. In my drawings I quote the view on the hand. The hand is situated in between the inner sight and the outside. I connect the outside projection with the conscious view of the own hand. Looking into your palm is peering into your history. Bruises, scars, lines and wrinkles tell about what you were going through. The hand consist many lines, like drawing or writing traces that you know by heart, but cannot read. I project the seen images through the frame of the hand into the world. The story is held together by the perspective, but also by the form of this persons hand. 

Jelenas text is poetic and documentary. Very often her words seem minimalistic and staccato-esque. Feelings get woven into real situations that make us want to scream. We are going to search for stories, mainly womens experiences, that we are going to pierce through with the means of our mediums.”