Maja Babič Košir
& Nevena Aleksovski
My Familiar Unfamiliar
Edition 1: I dreamed there was an island

May 13 — June 30, 2022
RAVNIKAR, Ljubljana, SI

I dreamed there was an island is the first joint exhibition project by Nevena Aleksovski and Maja Babič Košir, who work together under the name MY FAMILIAR UNFAMILIAR. The formation of the artist duo was a spontaneous and natural process that came about thanks to their very similar artistic practices and methods. The result is a distinctly multimedia and multilayered experiment, a specific visual dialogue between the two artists, who otherwise work independently in printmaking, illustration, drawing, painting and sculpture, but who share far more than complementary tastes and aesthetics. With certain aspects of their identity (woman, artist, precarious worker and migrant), they tried to find common ground that would help them transform the particular into the universal. They found these initially in their fragmented, minimalist pictorial language, but later also in their exploration of notions of origin and personal as well as collective identity in the context of the Yugoslav arena, in their exploration of the experience of (non-)belonging, alienation and nostalgia, and not least in the question of how the answers to these questions – which are usually never really answered, as they are never absolute – have shaped their artistic practices. Through the creative process, they found that both explore seemingly contradictory relationships that are of constitutive importance to them on a personal and creative level, such as past/present, internal/external, emotional/rational, independent/collective and personal/political.

The new collaboration, which like any partnership requires a certain degree of empathy, led them to an in-depth exploration of their personal archives (both metaphorical and real) and to a constant exchange: they consciously used dialogue as a specific artistic strategy. Their mutual communication took place on various (even unconscious) levels, especially intuitively when they translated it into the visual world; artworks intertwine, complement each other and create their own dialogues, like a living organism they are transformed, destroyed and reshaped depending on the contexts in which they are placed.

The ambient installation consists of spatial interventions with found and manufactured objects and canvases, drawings and collages. The artists paid particular attention to researching archival material and using discarded objects, especially vases and jugs, in the awareness that they have different functions in art and cultural history, from painted ancient vases to their representations in the centuries-old tradition of still life painting. Vases and jars form fragile, delicate columns that, in combination with robust materials (concrete, metal), testify to the search for balance. Reflecting on history through the intimate experience of the past has led them to think about art today, its potentials and possibilities, and their own roles and positions as artists. Their decision to join forces, cooperate and rely on genuine human contact, feedback and relationship can in itself be understood as a hopeful (protest) attitude.