Zapisi i scene

Exhibition in Belgrade – “Zapisi i scene” (Records and scenes)
Panels and sculptures (theatres)

Theme: Belgrade on panels
Large ceramic relief

Technique: stoneware

Historical, magic and psychological background

During the construction of “Progress Building” in Knez Mihailova street and the regulation of inner yards, up to the passage of Obilicev venac street, the archaeologists among the other things had found the existing medieval Jewish, Tzintzar and Turkish cemetery. It is known that approximately at the same place, with the beginning of XVIII century was extended to a large Public house, and the privilege of its beneficiaries was beautiful sight of the Danube and the Sava.

Dragana Jovanovic Pajovic was living at the same place in the house which was built two centuries later, on the fourth flour, in the apartment with the windows faced to the river Sava and Banovo Brdo. With the season changing, Dragana was daily watching Beli Dvor, Ministries cupolas, Palavicins sculptures in Kneza Milosa street, and the river Sava. Glancing on the right, she would see Toplicin Venac and gilded base of Orthodox Church steeple, and in the distance there was perceived Zemun with the Gardos red Tower, as well as the roofs of old and new unknown buildings. The landscape was changed by ruining and building new buildings. Kalemegdan, which she visited coutless times, was her intimate place and the scene of many activities from her youth.

What remain to the artist whose sights of buildings and city entirety are engraved in her memory? The exhibits in stoneware are ideas of something that we call Belgrade, scattered and mixed, as after the deepest tillage and arranged to disobey already seen natural circuits. Dragana Jovanovic Pajovic closed her sights without care for factual accuracy. With simple counting and fitting, she offers us amusing game of recognizing, provoking amazement of the observers.

Dragana Jovanovic Pajovic indicates the limits of biological life and points the evidence of the vitality of the former inhabitants of this city. Petrified and patinated scenes we experience as an intimate confrontation with our childhood memories, period when we were unable to assume the existence of any other town except this one in which we live.

Prof. Nikola Vukosavljavic