Irena Lagator Pejović

works

Word and Thought. The Big Abstract Painting

2025

interactive installation, 864 books from the "Reč i misao" edition, publishing house Rad, 4 x 4 x 1000 cm wooden shelves

10 x 2,74 m

Courtesy of the artist and MoCA Belgrade

Exhibition/Venue:

Irena Lagator Pejović and Jelena Micić, Inventory – Matter, Art, Capitalism. Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, curated by Miroslav Karić.

We would like to thank to the following libraries:

City Library “Vladislav Petković Dis”, Čačak

National Library “Dr Đorđe Natošević”, Inđija

Library “Vlada Aksentijević”, Obrenovac

National Library and Reading Room “Njegoš”, Cetinje

Photo: Bojana Janjić MoCA Belgrade, Irena Lagator Pejović

The interactive installation displays books from the publishing house "Rad," established in 1949 in socialist Yugoslavia. Producing manuals for postwar reconstruction through the Workers' University, it developed into one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the region. Its "Reč i misao" (Word and Thought) series, launched in 1959, was the first accessible collection of pocket-sized literary works, which democratized access to Yugoslav and world literature through mass circulation. National libraries of newly formed post-Yugoslav states systematically deaccessioned them, erasing material traces of shared cultural heritage.

The books, available to the public for reading, with their uniform red covers create a monochromatic surface reminiscent of an abstract painting, collapsing distinctions between high art and mass culture. Highlighting literature as artistic work and translation as essential postwar infrastructure, the installation critically questions the neoliberal market logic of contemporary art, proposing an alternative: art as a collective resource that embodies care, plurality, equality, and accessibility as means of representation. (Irena Lagator Pejović)

Word and Thought. The Big Abstract Painting