NATURA MORTA

Robert Jankuloski and Monika Moteska’s artistic language fits perfectly into an expanded field of the multiple use of photography in the dispersed expressive and idiomatic practices on the recent art scene in Macedonia. If we take a look back in the past, the use of photography as a “dependent” medium in artistic practices was a result of a global process which led to the abandonment of stern purity and autonomy of a single art medium in the period when Modernism was in decline. As far as the implementation of this practice in the artistic language conceptualisation in Macedonia is concerned, its humble beginnings date back to the second half of the 1980s. However, the aforementioned practice became very important, if not predominant, on the Macedonian art scene in the 1990s. While autonomy of an art medium and its aura of the pure form were being “soothed”, photography became enormously suitable for a multiple use within the civilisational reality of the image and visual representation in that period. Photography was now being used on the basis of different structures of representation: iconic condensation of an instantly recognisable image and its turning into a fetish; depersonalised expansion and circulation of images in a non-expressive manner as well as their endless reproductive multiplication.
Robert Jankulovski and Monika Moteska have applied the abovementioned use of photography as a medium in their project Natura morta, employing its expressive performance features with the aim of creating a conceptual idiom. Both authors have already worked on similar projects. In those projects, they have created fragmented or coherent narrative sequences, conceptualizing various aspects of the artistic language and its complex history, including numerous interesting phenomena of the contemporary reality. On this occasion, the two artists focus on a particular area of art and its history. They are interested in the phenomenon of a genre which is known as still life in the history of art. The authors use the Latin term ‘natura morta’ deliberately in order to emphasize its symbolic and civilisational significance and importance. Nevertheless, they put an end to that classic treatment of the genre. They also enable a subtle game or experiment with different levels and meanings of the fundamental postulates of the genre and every single element of its idiomatic structure, which form together the iconography of still life as a genre. In the works of Robert Jankulovski and Monika Moteska, one can notice how skilfully these artists modify allegory and dethrone the basic iconography of still life in an ironic way in order to apply the elements of the aforementioned genre in a different, yet modern context.

In this project, Jankuloski uses, as usual, his own photographs and ones created by other artists (i.e. some Macedonian photographers who lived in the first half of the 20th century). He generates thus an amalgamated mixture which carries the idea that a still life image can be created with different techniques and elements of recording our reality in a documentary-like manner. In such a narrative concept, Robert Jankuloski composes a photographic image and an expressive line, experimenting with various images of graveyards and placing some on-the tombs-laid down flowers in the focus of our attention, because flowers represent a symbol of life in the vicinity of death. In addition, he uses some particular photographs created by some old masters of photography. The iconography of these old photos suggests, in the context of this project, some morbid connotations indeed (a photo of the late Pane Napeski or a photo of a Muslim woman where a part of Zafir Ošavkov’s face can hardly be seen).
In her project segment, Monika Moteska uses a particular element. This element represents a conventional iconographic sign, if not a symbol, of still life – a dead bird. She makes the structure of still life and its distinctive component parts unusual. The artist shows a dead stuffed bird as if it is alive and flying, not hiding the fact that it is not a living creature. That subtle game of life and death, that narrative about shifting from the real into the unreal, reaches its peak in the photograph of a transvestite dressed up as a bride. It is a bit morbid mixture of different reality layers, but it turns an experiment with impossible combinations into an explicit, ironic comment on the conventions of still life as an art genre.

By Valentino Dimitrovski


Мonika Moteska (Prilep, Macedonia, 1971) holds her BFA Degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje (1996). Monika has presented her works at numerous solo and group exhibitions held in her homeland, then in Austria, Serbia, Sweden, Greece, the USA and Japan. She works in the Macedonian Centre for Photography.


Robert Jankuloski (Prilep, Macedonia, 1969) holds his BFA Degree from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Department of Camera, in Skopje (1996). This photographer and cameraman is the founder and director of the Macedonian Centre for Photography. He teaches Photography at several universities in Macedonia. His professional career includes about twenty solo exhibitions held in Macedonia, Austria, Bulgaria and Serbia, as well as numerous group exhibitions, such as Manifesta 1 – Foundation European Art Manifestation in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (1996) and Context Europe (Impulse from the Balkans) in Lyon, France. Robert Jankuloski has been awarded several times.
Contact: robert.jankuloski@gmail.com