Belgrade University Library
19th April – 13th May 2017
The good wife, is comprehensive, multimedia project from 2015. started with series of self-portraits in which the author is questioning the role that woman has in the contemporary society, where this
‘contemporary’ is more like a linguistic curtain, that hides totally opposite show and intent from the
patriarchy, to save its positions and domination. With ironic approach, author uses his body and props, trying to trivialize the ideas of ‘the good wife’, playing with frequent stereotypes, from the typical ones, good mother, to flower fixer or the queen of the kitchen. His heroines are free from their identity; they are static, frozen and ‘nicely packed’ sculptures, perfect ornaments for your home. This question could be generalized to the point where we can ask ourselves one even more schizophrenic than this, why the bad is bad and the good is good, and what is criteria for that polarization. Or, if woman has a right to choose, how than she can’t have her own choice.How do we find the balance in those irreconcilable positions, the ones that the society give to me and the ones I choose myself, it is most important question in the second part of the work, where the focus is “in her eyes” , and asks us to look and see what it is that she is seeing.
Retraditionalization is more and more in everyday life, and in many bigger cultures than the one we live in, but what is interesting for Clement, is the phenomenon of mythologization and fiction in those traditions we learn about; in mainstream media we see a woman fighting against a woman who gave her right to be in mainstream media and fight for or against anything; very common conflict between what the lobbyist is saying and the way that he lives; terrifying statistic that each year is rising more and more in violence against woman, from the psychological one to the one with fatal outcome; all of that is motivation for this work to be created. For the author most important thing is making philosophical task, not the reason for debate or building up of your own side on this topic, but the reason to think about it, to question it, to analyze yourself and the world around you through his artistic idea.
