PRESS RELEASE

Slovak photographer Agata Marzecova's project focuses on the daily lives of people in their late twenties, working in the field of culture. The notions precariat and precariousness refer here on the one hand, to unpredictability and the lack of security, on the other hand, to the inseparable relationships between work and private life of those portrayed.

Flexi-work, project-salaries, migration and immigration are the sources and ingredients for an insecure private life. Since the early 2000s, sociologists have started to employ the concept precariat in talking about a separate social class, in search for new definitions and in attempt to conceptualize human traffic. In the specific local context the project is exploring for the meaning and relevance of precariat in Estonian.

 
Agata observes and documents through the eyes of the participator, consciously escaping the relationship of the other in her work. While mapping her objects, she is also talking about herself. According to the artist, she has reached the subject as an alternative to the format of an artistic self-portrait - she is giving it a more diverse appearance and including more voices. Through the comparison of various societies in which the subjects of Agata’s photo documentary operate, the images reveal the uncertainties and yet creativity of the everyday life of contemporary youth. This simultaneously sets the validity and content of the definitions of „normal“ and „work“ in today's society at large. The project has been completed during two years and was born in the conditions of the economic boom, at the beginning of 2010, the daily life without social guarantees and predictabilities seems to touch upon a far more wider circle of people in contemporary society.

Project is joined by the sound installation of Hendrik Saare, and it was curated to fit the context of Hobusepea gallery by Margaret Tali.

Press release by Margaret Tali.

Exhibition will be open until February 8, 2010.

Supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Project Precariat  / Prekariaadi Projekt
(2007-2009)

This project explores moments from lives of several Europeans in their late twenties, working in different spheres of art and culture. Kelly from UK studied to be a photographer and now is retraining herself to be an art teacher. Jeremie lives between Iceland and Paris and combines voluntary work for NGO’s with web designing. Margaret has a degree in art history and travels between Estonia and Holland working on various art projects, Ivana from Slovakia works as a curator in a gallery and Mikko from Finland is just completing his one-year voluntary project in Russian Samara. Although geographically scattered and personally different, they seem to be forming a new social class that embodies contradictions between creativity and everydayness in the present society. Presented photogpraphs depart from the individual portraits to create a visual melange, common portrait of a certain new social category - "Precarité or Precariat".

Their work, perceived as creative, is expected to be full of excitement and unprecedented opportunities. These perceptions, strongly influenced by the new discourse of creativity, leave however untouched the other side of these possibilities, that is, the problem of social and financial insecurity. Late twenties is the age traditionally recognized as life stage when one is sufficiently educated for life and when the step into career building and family is expected. My subjects do not refuse these social expectations, however, through their everyday decisions they question them and challenge the traditional categories of what is work and free time, learning and play, private and common, career and failure.

This photographic series gradually originated from a ‘social documentary photography assignement’. Therefore, it represents not only my interest to comment on a particular social issue, but it is at the same time an attempt to respond to the idea of ‘photographic documentary’ as such. Traditionally, documentary photography focus on topics that are understood as different in relation to what we perceive as everyday and normal. However, I think that today, it is rather important to reflect on the normality of the social system in which we are situated throughout our everyday lives.

Agata Marzecova

Margaret Tali (1980) is a critic and art theorist, who has curated different visual and textual projects (recently she’s edited special issue “Economics of Estonian Art” in the magazine Kunst.ee). At the moment she has dedicated herself to research in the research institute Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at Amsterdam University. In the current exhibition project she has been a subject of photographs as well as the curator. 

Hendrik Saare (1982) is pursuing his MA studies in Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and works as an editor of music and soundworks. In his work he is interested in the reception of music and the related mechanisms of perceiving.
His sound installation “Precarious sounds” fills the exhibition space downstairs.

Agáta Marzecová (1981) was born in Czechoslovakia. She studied at the Institute of Creative Photography in Czech Republic and Faculty of Natural Science in Bratislava, Slovakia. Currently she works and lives in Estonia. Her photographic works combine artistic and research practice and have been exhibited in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Germany, France.

Selected exhibitions
2009 Topographies of the immediate present, Bratislava, SK
2008 K veci (About still life), Galerie Opera, Ostrava, Czech republic
2007 ITF, Month of photography, Bratislava, Slovakia
2007 Czech start, Brotfabrik Galerie, Berlin, Germany
2007 FRAME 006, Central European House of Photography, Bratislava, Slovakia
2006 FRAME 006, Moravská galéria, Brno, Czech Republic