outcrying the hawkers

where
Ljubljana / škofja loka,
slovenia

when
2023

production
self-PRODUCTION
MG+MSUM

form
processual
guerrilla interventions
site-specific
indoor installation

THANKS
MAkita
Tatiana Kocmur

The outcrying the hawkers series began when I noticed a roadside advertisement with a huge figure, which is a national symbol in the Slovenian cultural space – a sower. The figure, which in the given connotation is used as a logo, appears in its original form in an impressionist painting by Ivan Grohar from 1907 and is now found on the Slovenian version of the 5 cent euro coin. In Grohar's impressionist painting, the sower is staged in a field, and in the background we can see a hayrack - an autochthonous Slovenian MONO-ARCHITECTURE, once intended for drying hay and today protected as cultural heritage. nevertheless, hayracks are today often used as a carrier of roadside advertisements. so, The aforementioned roadside advertisement was attached directly to the haystack, which completed the absurdity.

By cutting the ADVERTISING TARPAUL and PLACEMENT of the cut-off FIGURE on the field, I symbolically returned the sower to where he belongs. I then photographed the installation following the exact composition of Grohar's painting. By coincidence, the intervention took place in the municipality of Škofja Loka, the town where GrohaR LIVED AND WHERE THE PAINTING OF THE Sower WAS CREATED.

This intervention initiated a series of direct actions OF removING advertisEMENTS from hayRacks. When I had collected enough ADS, I cut them into strips AND placed on an abandoned hayrack in the form of hay. In this WAY, ads WEre no longer readable and thus lose their basic function. They have been transformed into colorful strips that somehow festively adorn abandoned hayrack and resemble an old ethnological motif.

After two weeks of drying in the sun, the strips were put through a hay baler and transformed into a sculpture.

For the last intervention in the series, which took place in an urban environment, I applied the same logic in a counter-context. This time, hay was placed on a billboard. After nine days, the intervention was removed by workers from a local company, as the hay from the billboard had spread across the road and sidewalk.

jaka babnik

jurij lozič

installation at msum

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