Church of Our Lady of Health, Piran, 7 June–29 October 2024

This is not the first time that artist Igor Andjelić has addressed those who enter sacred spaces. Over the past ten years, he has conceived a series of multidisciplinary projects that seek to shake the traditional static role of art in the restrictive context of sacred architecture. Although his photography career is well known, it is his interventions in sacred spaces that show him most clearly as a cultural agitator and creator of artistic experiences.

The exhibition Confess, currently on view in the Church of Our Lady of Health in Piran, is the artist's fourth intervention in this space. With a truly iconoclastic stance and an unwavering intuition, Igor Andjelić once again creates a utopian situation that takes the ideology of the contemporary exhibition space back to its ecclesiastical origins, thus shaping an updated liturgy that transcends the predictable limits of artistic intervention. Through the choice of space and the works on display, as well as their considered placement, the artist and his collaborators create a deliberately mystical atmosphere that evokes a contemplative experience in the visitor. Confess is a total work of art with clear transcendental tendencies. The object here is a sanctuary with dynamic and contemporary artistic expressions that replace the absent religious symbolism, while the context belongs to the viewer.

In a meta-artistic act, the artist uses recognisable elements from the history of art to create a narrative that seeks to evoke in the viewer an experience of redemption that transcends the link between the mundane and the divine. Identification, recognition and interaction are revealed here as inevitable conditions for individual and social evolution. The mirror, which has historically been used as a detector of misperception, returns to its original function as a key to opening up new vistas. Igor Andjelić's exhibition concept is to display The Confessional (2024), two golden, Kapoor-inspired panels, on the side altars by which he wishes to emphasise the message of his installation. With this gesture, he raises the question of the subjective nature of perception and at the same time takes a deeper look into the revealing possibilities of the self-portrait as an uncomfortable expression of personal confession.

The restitution of the main altar with Marina Abramović's Golden Mask (2009) is not only a token of recognition of the artist's ability to reveal the most unfathomable aspects of existence, but also a tribute to the undisputed icon of performance art. The image of the artist speaks to us in the video; with a fixed gaze and a face covered with quivering gold leaf, she is elevated in the given space into a master of ritual confession, revealing to us the poignant process of accepting resignation to fate as a natural response that, faced with the decline of our ideals, we find difficult to condemn.

Confess is an invitation to an insightful experience that happens at the very moment when the observer is confronted with an unexpected image of oneself. To accept that the reflection of one's own image is far from the perfect ideal we have of ourselves. To honestly admit that we can always expect more from ourselves.

Concept and implementation: Igor Andjelić

Participating artists: Marina Abramović and Igor Andjelić

Sound design: Aldo Kumar

Curator and author of the text: Yasmín Martín Vodopivec

Text editing: Vesna Česen Rošker

Proofreading: Postulat

Translation: Arven Šakti Kralj

Production: ULAY Foundation

Supported by: Municipality of Piran – Comune di Pirano