19 I 91

19 I 91
Jelena Pajić, Katya Yanova
Jane Efremova

27 August – 19 September 2026

Opening: Thursday, August 27, 8 pm

.

About the exhibition

The exhibition takes 1991 as its point of departure, the year of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Born around this historical threshold, Jelena Pajić and Katya Yanova come from generations that inherited the legacies of these events rather than the events themselves.

Working with photography, video, archives, found objects, and personal and collective narratives, their practices examine how historical events are carried into individual lives and memory. What is remembered and preserved is considered alongside what remains unspoken: gaps, contradictions, tensions, unexpected resonances, and experiences that are often impossible to articulate or transmit directly.

“19 I 91” presents the works without attribution. Rather than being separated by authorship, they are brought into a shared space where the dialogue between them takes precedence over individual authorship. Read together, the works reveal unexpected affinities and shared concerns while preserving the distinct perspectives from which they emerge.

Jelena Pajić draws on collective memory, exploring how family histories, microhistories, and personal testimonies challenge official narratives. Katya Yanova begins with her own experience, asking how subjectivity is formed and where the boundary between the individual and the collective might lie. In one practice, the movement is from history towards the individual; in the other, from the individual towards history. It is precisely within this difference that a space for encounter emerges.

We would like to express our gratitude to U10 Art Space and Elder Design Studio for their support of the project, Victoria Kibe for graphic design services, and Miroslav Ćuk for the translation of the texts into Serbian.