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Mirna Pavlovic

 

Mirna Pavlovic (1989, Croatia) is a photographer and writer. A storyteller with a severe case of restlessness.

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Her quest for the abandoned, the forgotten and the derelict has led her all over Europe – fuelled by the desire and a desperate yearning to break out of prescribed norms of moving through an urban environment. But most of all, that same quest is one of identity, tirelessly seeking to find out the reasons behind the urge to explore, in places where the past, the present and the future collide, merge and form a reality of their own.

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Her work has so far been shown as part of several group exhibitions, most notably at Moscow International Foto Awards 2016 (winner), Rovinj Photodays 2016 (finalist), in the PH21 Gallery in Budapest (honourable mention), at Zagreb Salon, an international photography competition, and Artichoke festival in Zagreb. Last year she was invited to talk about her project at the Open Show, organized by Organ Vida, Balkan’s most prestigious photography festival.

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In addition to her photography, she was a writer for “Between Nowhere & Never – Photographs of Forgotten Places”, a photography book by Reginald Van de Velde, released worldwide. She continuously writes and publishes short stories to accompany her photographs. 

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Artist statement

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Abandoned spaces dot the cityscape like blind spots, existing in temporal incongruities they themselves produce. Theirs is a different reality than our own. They are never truly dead, yet never really alive. Precariously treading along the border between life and death, decay and growth, the seen and the unseen, the past and the present, abandoned places confusingly encompass both at the same time, thus leaving the ordinary passer-by overwhelmed with both attraction and revulsion. An uncertainty of what to do, a discrepancy between the wish to look away and the unconscious desire to step into them.

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As public space becomes privatized and the restriction of movement in urban environments increases, there is an overwhelming encouragement to avert the gaze. Not to wonder. Not to wander. The world is structured to guide us, with traffic lights, road crossings, paths and fences, designated areas for play, work, death. Crossing the border of imposed restrictions means to purposefully go against ingrained beliefs, to breach a loose social contract held together by a fear of punishment and a comfortable status quo. We become bold, but timid. Eager, yet unwanting. Frozen in that one moment that seems as long as life itself, a moment of perpetual decision-making that gives birth to no decision at all.

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In the end, the acts of transgression and trespassing into abandoned spaces become equally as incongruous in nature as the spaces being explored. Wandering off the path, like the abandonments, becomes in itself an act that is both invisible and increasingly present. Both suppressed and flourishing. It becomes a desperate cry against the discouragement to see and experience, a cry for freedom in a world where everything is prescribed, regulated and expected.

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The homeless, the drug addict, the metal thief, the graffiti vagabond – these become our sisters and brothers in a self-imposed exile. To find a new home, we claim the ones that were once called by that name, reappropriating not only the structure itself but their own personal histories as well. In an almost carnevalesque manner, they become sites of our own search for context, meaning and definition. These homes become grotesquely revitalized, but remain within their own reality. In turn, we become vehicles of disparity, embodying and assimilating the otherness and the radical alterity offered by abandonments. 

 

Text and photography by Mirna Pavlovic.

 

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