AGAPÈ: bringing together that which disperses
On Mariana Lazarevic’s works of art and haute couture

Mariana laughs. She laughs with all her senses, as she nearly always does when she is not thinking or talking to show that all countries are mysteries, that each ‘alone’ still is the entire world. Everywhere the light and the power of beauty shine, even in anti-art. Needy men and women everywhere, wishing to stay up all night to read a story they never want to forget or watch an image that will move them for the rest of their lives. With all her round body curves and her warm bosom Mariana draws movements into drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptures that make a lasting impression, and into haute couture models, as if Eve’s original sin still needs to be disguised into a festive experience. Agape, every living creature is an infant to her.
 
Mariana Lazarevic was born on the Balkans, in Belgrade in 1965. From early on she was interested in fabrics and drawing. She and her mother were constantly making creations out of all those pieces of cloth, or crocheting or spool knitting with threads. She soon realized that line and thread possess structure, that she could unravel those pieces of cloth and give them new form, expressing her dreams and imagination. As a little girl she could easily become a witch or a princess using these pieces. She soon realized that what she dispersed could be rebuilt into fabric or a structured, larger piece of cloth: or even into a hole in that piece, or into a piled-up series of forms, one creation, one image. Without clothes it was cold and without clothes things were less cheerful. Clothes added colour to the daily routine and attracted the attention of friends. She realized that on the verge of adulthood the gap with the other unfolds and everything becomes a pose.
Even then each creation became a struggle for Mariana to design the power of light and beauty, in order to make her world into the entire world after all. 

Her talent has never stood in the way of her love, and as a human being, as a woman she surprises at the archetypal level. Titles of her exhibitions such as ‘Super Woman’, ‘Zapping Culture’, ‘Talking Minds’, ‘Equilibrium Nostrum’, ‘Fashion NL’ betray her concept. Making observations, she constantly employs a kind of mental realism, translated into all kinds of art forms, in which lines and structures constitute the basic language of each piece. In addition, there are two types of identity claims behind each work: her Serbian identity as opposed to the Western European one and even the eastern identity on the one hand and her female identity as a reflection on male culture on the other. Mariana Lazarevic manages to extend this even to her fashion images. Her art is nothing without her feeling for the thread, and her thread is nothing without her feeling for expression. She is particularly interested in connecting these things, never losing sight of visual qualities. To her, being an artist is not a choice.
She draws, cuts, takes photographs and paints like a bird whistles in nature to express a moment of ‘happiness’. In the process, the distinction between ‘Craft’ and ‘art’ gets blurred.

Her imagination never fails her; this is proven by the fact that she always manages to evoke, almost invisibly, an atmosphere of oppression and longing, of aliens that seem to exist as some kind of precursors of heaven or hell. Hundreds of millions of people in the world do not have a purpose in life, but are longing to find life. Mariana Lazarevic shows this: utterly devoid of all pretensions she creates her language in which she tries to soften our experiences, our suffering from ourselves and from others, through a visual evidence that gives sense senselessly: from a reworked photograph to a collection of clothing designs.
This leads to visual performances with international guests and music.
On such occasions Mariana Lazarevic beams. Her true birth is to show this freedom – a freedom that connects.

Nicole Hermans
Art historian and Aica journalist
The Hague, July 2007