Artist: Maja Djordjevic
Exhibition title: Everybody Wants To Be Somebody
Curated by: Peter Bencze
Venue: ENA Viewing Space, Budapest, Hungary
Date: December 14, 2019 – ongoing, 2020
Photography: © Aron Weber, all images copyright and courtesy of the artists, Everybody Needs Art
Everybody needs somebody
Everybody needs somebody to love (someone to love)
Sweetheart to miss (sweetheart to miss)
Sugar to kiss (sugar to kiss)
I need you you you
I need you you you
I need you you you In the morning
I need you you you When my soul’s on fire
Sometimes I feel
I feel a little sad inside
When my baby mistreats me
I never never never have a place to hide
I need you
Sometimes I feel
I feel a little sad inside
When my baby mistreats me
I never never never have a place to hide
I need you you you
I need you you you
I need you you you
I need you you you
I need you
You know people when you do find that somebody
Hold that woman, hold that man
Love him, hold him,
squeeze her, please her, hold her
Squeeze and please that person,
give ’em all your love
Signify your feelings with every gentle caress
Because it’s so important to have that special somebody
to hold, kiss, miss, squeeze and please
Everybody needs somebody
Everybody needs somebody to love
Someone to love
Sweetheart to miss
Sugar to kiss
I need you you you
I need you you you
I need you you you…
–
Everybody Be Somebody by Ruffneck
“Everybody Wants To Be Somebody” is the inaugural solo exhibition of the London-based Serbian artist in Hungary.
Maja Djordjevic’s multi-disciplinary works are reminiscent of computer doodles, but in reality are produced with meticulous craft using traditional oil and enamel, resulting in a unique and seductively tactile series of pixelated illusions.
Djordjevic paints rectilinear shapes by hand, sketched out in an early kind of MacPaint program, where squares of color are so large as to prevent too much detail. The central figure appearing throughout the narrative of the works is a girl character, mostly seen simply being herself, portrayed in various tragical and yet comical situations that could be half-fictional half-autobiographical, but above all very relatable. The girl is often depicted naked, her gender only suggested through a small black vertical line as her vagina, touching on art historical representations of the nude and narratives of the male and the female gaze from a position of tongue-in-cheek feminine power. Her main color pallet enhances the playfulness of her works with various bright pinks and blues coloring her protagonists no matter the context they’re in. Djordjevic’s practice is a humorous yet unapologetically direct exploration of contemporary society’s obsession with “relatability” and identity through collective Internet culture and our yearning to become a part of something, to be Somebody.
