Maja Bajević: Damaged Goods: Galerie Peter Kilchmann

rue des Arquebusiers, Paris

Galerie Peter Kilchmann is delighted to present for the first time in Paris and for the fifth time with the gallery, Damaged Goods the new solo exhibition by Maja Bajević (*1967 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; lives and works in Paris). This exhibition provides the artist with the opportunity to continue several ongoing famous series and engage them in dialogue with new works. Gathered into a new ensemble, the gallery showcases ceramic sculptures, neon lights, an installation, embroideries, a new video, and a set of paintings.

"Who admires ascends." * Empathy is at the heart of Damaged Goods: an expression that evokes both damaged goods and individuals who have experienced adversity. Bajević invites her audience to walk through heterogeneous artistic proposals that share a similar wish: to animate this feeling, this movement towards, in a spectator momentarily freed from the vicissitudes of their own existence. This allows the viewer to be absorbed by the history of women, immigrants and gives them the chance to carry away at least a little of the memory of those who have contributed so much to the preciousness and multiplicity of our worlds.

With Gap (embroidery on cotton, 89 x 130 cm, 2024), the powers and successes are inequitably distributed based on gender, both in the public and private spheres. Why don’t you love me anymore (embroidery on cotton, 81 x 115.5 cm, 2024) delves even deeper into the intimate. However, she is distinctly depicted higher than he, the constancy of her love that does not wane and moves according to a calm curve finally ensures her advantage.

The series titled L'Origine du Monde (ceramics, variable dimensions, 2024) conveys both shock and horror at contemplating these findings, as well as the absurdity and obsolescence of the kind of thinking that encourages and/or perpetuates these phenomena. The female attributes are the size of a fruit and fit in the palm of the hand. . While undoubtedly frightening to be thus separated from entire bodies, these sculptures also playfully offer buttocks and lips, roundness and intimacy to the absurd signs that patriarchal societies want to engrave on them.

The evocative power of these short phrases engages the viewer in a reading that summons both the political and the poetic. An Artist Who Has No Country Is No Artist (blown glass and neon, 52 x 104 x 9,5 cm, 2024) borrows its rhythm and prelude from Mladen Stilinović's work An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist (1992).