Irena Lagator Pejović

works

This is Not a Landscape Any Longer. Architectures of Accountability

2026

300 x 600 x 35 cm

Exhibition/Venue: REFLEXION. Light Mirrors Transparency. A Joint Exhibition by the Four Museums in The Pinakothek Der Moderne to Mark Die Neue Sammlung’s 100th Anniversary, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, curated by: Andjelka Badnjar Gojnić, Caroline Fuchs, Michael Hering, Franziska Kunze, Irene Meissner, Angelika Nollert, Bernhart Schwenk

Photo: Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum (K. Mewes), details: Irena Lagator

 

The installation creates a fragile self-supporting landscape from reclaimed facade glass from Munich, collected through the Treibgut circular economy initiative. The work references Bauhaus ideals of transparency as a democratic symbol, revealing a profound paradox: the reflection of light through material that promised progress today mirrors the ecological catastrophe of carbon modernity. Transparency, once a utopian vision, becomes material evidence of systemic collapse. Confronting the ruins of modernism, the work poses urgent questions: how do we learn from what remains? How do we build on ruins? Through transforming the discarded into critical testimony, the piece demands a rethinking of institutional responsibility. Aesthetics becomes a tool against forgetting—a mirror of our failure and a call for systemic change. (Irena Lagator Pejović)