Garaža Kamba

The intertwining of different threads and their free movement in space leads to the formation of individual objects in an unbreakable collective that symbolizes the weaving of life. In his work, Željko Beljan connects Ingold’s theory of the line, according to which threads are used as a metaphor for living beings in thinking about space and understanding the world, with the hybridity of individual or collective identity. The author speaks about the constant variability of identity through the techniques and materials he uses in making masks, tapestries and an unconventional embroidered image. He applies various motifs from personal photographs, mostly family albums, details from old Slavic customs or folk costumes, and parts of childhood memories. Beljan attributes an ethnographic-scientific-fantastic character onto his artworks, emphasizing their appearance of artistic-ethnographic exhibits, created as a result of his subjective narrative. Masks made with the technique of macrame symbolize the author’s different roles within the social context, more specifically, the different jobs he performed, referring to the conservation of these typified roles, but also the carnivalesque. This notion of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin marks a temporary world in which the hierarchy is twisted, in which the boundaries between official and unofficial, serious and humorous, art and life are erased. At the same time, Beljan also refers to the relationship between noble academic art and handicraft (outsider art), which he places on the material-physical plane. The author further emphasizes the incompleteness and imperfection of the works, leaving swatches on which the motifs are embroidered on the surface or the remains of wool on the back of the tapestry. As such, Benjamin’s work, apart from its motives, takes on the aesthetic features of grotesque realism through the emphasis on corporeality and carnivaleque understanding of the world.

Gallery