Group exhibition “70. Artistic colony Ečka: Utopias of collectivity,” Contemporary Gallery Zrenjanin (Serbia), selectors and curators: Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić, organizer: Slavica Žarković. Photo by Alen Aligrubić.
Walking by the River: Begej is a wall-based installation that consists of a mural composed of paint and wall engravings measuring 160 x 500 cm, as well as a series of ten pencil and “Ečka” tap water drawings on aquarelle paper, each measuring 40 x 30 cm. Created in 2025, this work is part of the Contemporary Gallery Zrenjanin collection.
RIVERS
I let the rivers flow
because they are murky, because they think aloud,
and maybe somewhere, to someone, they will speak
what I have not known how to express clearly.
—Blaže Koneski, Birds over Which Night and Day Divide, Templum, 2014
In Walking by the River: Begej, I continue my investigation of rivers as contested and symbolic sites—geographical thresholds through which questions of memory, identity, and spatial politics are explored. This work was a continuation of a previous project focused on the Vardar River in Skopje as a site of both personal and collective significance that divides the city physically and politically. In this new piece, the Begej River becomes the focus of embodied research. During my walks along the river, I engaged directly with the environmental, industrial, agricultural, and urban landscapes that shape its banks. The experiences gathered during these walks are integrated into a new installation that highlights the tension between the protected natural environment of Carska Bara, located southwest of Ečka, and the ongoing issues concerning the quality of drinking water in the region.
The use of turquoise paint and engraved imagery of reeds and bulrushes alludes to the ideal of a clean lake or river. This fragment of a landscape is contrasted with the reality of polluted water visible in the new series of drawings, where I write using my nonbinary Archetype Open Form typography, which makes reading an almost impossible act, applied through layers of the yellow-brown tones of Ečka’s undrinkable tap water.