
Darja Bajagić Montenegro, b. 1990
Untitled Study (Fingerprints; Weapon from Picture 51), 2020
acrylic, fabric dye, gauze, inkjet print, latex, and paper
38.1 x 28.6 cm
15 x 11 1/4 in
15 x 11 1/4 in
Copyright The Artist
Mining symbology relevant to extremist ideas from an eclectic lexicon of interests and sometimes morbid fascinations, the sources of Bajagić’s works make reference to are far-ranging. Leaked police files pertaining...
Mining symbology relevant to extremist ideas from an eclectic lexicon of interests and sometimes morbid fascinations, the sources of Bajagić’s works make reference to are far-ranging. Leaked police files pertaining to investigations into the infamous neo-Nazi murderers of the National Socialist Underground, image albums and literature from a devoted group of necromantics specifically involved in the community sub-culture of a book store and art gallery in New Orleans known as Westgate Necromantic, films such as Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 Olympia: Festival of Beauty, and theoretical texts that support the discursive ground the current incarnation of the show inevitably insists standing on as a restaging of its cancelled counterpart from New York back in Fall 2018, including Paul Virilo’s 2006 essay “Silence on Trial, ” are among others, all weaved into the artist’s tightly sewn painting assemblages.
Through her use of this compositional strategy, always tied to behind-the-scenes research that remains available through each piece’s title, Bajagić manages to evade essentialist interpretations rather than reinforce them. The heightened and ambiguous zone that is created when multiple visually resemblant signs conjure a volatile array of possible connotations alongside one another ultimately neutralizes and may even diffuse overly charged extractable reads. The artist revels in the virtually infinite capacity of painting as a medium to position signs and other two-dimensional artifacts at such odds with one another.
Through her use of this compositional strategy, always tied to behind-the-scenes research that remains available through each piece’s title, Bajagić manages to evade essentialist interpretations rather than reinforce them. The heightened and ambiguous zone that is created when multiple visually resemblant signs conjure a volatile array of possible connotations alongside one another ultimately neutralizes and may even diffuse overly charged extractable reads. The artist revels in the virtually infinite capacity of painting as a medium to position signs and other two-dimensional artifacts at such odds with one another.