Stephanie Rizaj.

The Colour of Serendipity/A Critique of Everyday Life.

Julie Van der Wielen

The serendipitist finds valuable things without looking for them. This notion beautifully captures an important dimension of Stephanie Rizaj’s work. Fragments of personal lives, elements from the everyday, found objects and fabrics, places... These are not just presented as readymades but carefully worked on, with a great sensitivity to colour and texture, combined with a sharp, critical eye.

       Engaging in this kind of exploration requires curiosity, an open mind, a willingness to embrace chance, and intuition. It takes time and patience, thus promoting a slower and more spontaneous practice — a breath of fresh air in this fast society where planning, decision-making and self-affirmation are the norm. This further results in a surprising variety of  outputs. While Rizaj primarily focuses on installations, she has also created videos and performances, and has presented what we could call ‘made objects’ — objects that may appear ordinary but are distinct from found objects, given that the artist fabricates them. Through her works, Rizaj brings mystery to the commonalilties of the everyday and interrogates them. They are stills of a multifaceted process combining coincidence and deliberation, like signs hinting at complex, problematic realities that usually remain hidden.

I Love Michael Asher (2018, 140 x 200 cm) is an installation in which glass panels hang from the ceiling from steel chains, forming a table with seats around it. The panels contain heating textile and are connected to the electricity through a number of black cables, gathering together next to the multiple black power strips, with their red indicators lit. On the glass table, a single red can made out of wax is melting away. The paradoxical combination of cool glass and steel, and warm wax and lights creates an uncanny atmosphere, while the sensible heat suggests both comfort and destruction.

       The title of this work evokes the homonymous exhibition by Isa Genzkin (2016, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles), who was influenced by Michael Asher’s work. Genzkin and Asher both examined the formal qualities of sculpture and of institutional settings, and presented the viewers with alternative — often discomforting — environments, in order to offer critical tools to navigate the contradictions surrounding us. Both artists are often associated with institutional critique, an aspect that is also present in Rizaj’s work. We can recognise this kind of critique in the early Untitled (Curtainwall) (2015), which features large curtains (140 x 140 x 300 cm) with the windows and radiators of a room digitally printed on them, installed inside a windowless white cube, which appears as cold and sterile. The 2016 performance How to Be Trained as an Artist also presents an institutional critique, by blurring the relation between art and its outside. In this performance, three individuals are strolling around dressed in uniforms made from Turkish towels of different shades of soft blue, while within the same venue there are rectangular, steel structures, painted in the exact same shades of blue, as if the subjects of the artwork escaped the frames in order to walk around casually, just like everybody else.

       We can also associate Rizaj’s work with Henri Lefebvre’s idea of a critique of everyday life.[1] According to Lefebvre, our everyday expresses the economics, the politics and the values of the society that we live in, and it is being colonised by capitalism. As a result, accepting this everyday means accepting the existing production relations, political superstructure, and values, and not being willing or able to imagine alternatives. In this way, the French sociologist shows the importance of everyday life, which is often neglected and considered unimportant.

       Boiling Loop (2019) strongly resonates with this idea. In this installation, we can see Turkish coffee being brewed in a red cezve on a flatscreen. Next to it, there is a lounge chair and an object in the shape of dumbbells, both of which are made out of steel, glass and heating foil, and are connected to the electricity, producing heat. At first sight, the lounge chair, the dumbbells and the flat screen seem to interact well with the idea of brewing coffee. They suggest that, while waiting, one coud lie down, do some weight-lifting, or watch TV. The black and red of the real-life objects come back in the cezve and the stove on the screen, and the objects give off heat as we imagine the stove and the coffee do. However, these objects actually stand in stark contrast with the rudimentary, time-consuming and labour-intensive brewing method, which requires one to stay present and pay attention not to spoil the coffee. Together with the notification on the screen that the battery is low, this produces an awkward, almost surreal contradiction, raising questions about labour, technology and free time. Boiling Loop shows how new technologies pose the problem of everyday life, of its value and fragility. By showing a Turkish coffee maker together with the ironic low battery notification, Rizaj hints at the fact that different regions, different individuals, or different domains of life follow different rhythms of change, and that progress spreads unevenly, which can lead to tensions and absurdities. What is more, this installation embodies the idea that technological progress does not always mean an improvement in the quality of our everyday lives, and that the everyday constitutes both the object of and a powerful tool for critique.

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Rizaj further made three noteworthy films. As if Biting Iron (2019) starts out with the green landscape of a Kosovan forest. A female voice affirms that women are seen to be surrounded by walls and that they should unite to move forward and break these walls. She associates the idea of being surrounded by walls with an Albanian saying about biting iron. Meanwhile, a deserted brutalist building appears in the forest. Different stills show the impressive building, which is in ruins and, in certain places, covered in green moss and plants. Concurrently, women are 

walking through the forest, approaching the building, and then starting to push against its concrete walls. Not long after, we see a multitude of women, pushing against the same huge wall together, suggesting unity and togetherness, strength and hope — but also struggle, hardship and despair, as the wall these women are pushing does not move.

       Traces (2020) takes us to Marseille. It goes back and forth between the rugged landscape of the coast and a popular neighbourhood. The silence of the coastal landscape, its warm oranges and whites, and its rugged texture contrast with the smooth metal and plastered surfaces of the urban environment, with its cool whites and greens, and with the noises made by playing kids. Two children introduce the neighbourhood and talk about their dreams. We see them walking around at the foot of a tall building and running up stairs, as the sounds and images become more and more dreamlike, to finally melt together with a very white, almost lunar landscape by the sea. Now the kids are in a boat, then walking through the rugged coastal scenery. There are stairs and abandoned buildings, and we hear an enigmatic tune and muffled sounds, until we dive into the sea. The camera slowly swims through the water. There are rocks, little fish, something that looks like an amphitheater, and other constructions in the sea — all deepening the surreal, dreamlike atmosphere. What if Atlantis was real? The legendary city of Atlantis, which Plato depicts in his Timaeus as a highly advanced civilization that perished due to moral decline, is often associated with Thomas More’s fictional utopia, which he describes as an ideal society characterised by harmony, equality, and justice. These places illustrate the complex relation between idealism and reality in human societies. In a similar way, Traces questions the dream of social and natural harmony, and hints at the intricate interplay between aspirations for perfection and the societal realities we face.

       Welcome to Your New Life (2022) features a woman’s voice, mechanically giving instructions on how to disappear — to flee, and start a new life. While we hear these instructions, the camera rotates, showing the interior of a bar with orange walls, which looks familiar and cosy but also somewhat gloomy and nostalgic. A senior man in a blue T-shirt appears. He is dancing in the bar, alone. As the instructions become more and more inhumane, the image turns around faster and faster. ‘Be prepared to experience how wonderful and cruel human beings can be. Don’t run to any predictable place. Leave town and keep going until you’re unable to. To them you are nothing more than a faceless fugitive...’ The man keeps dancing — he smiles and looks as if he is enjoying himself. It is worth noting that the instructions that we hear are from a real instruction manual for starting a new life[2] and that this work is based on a true story of a close acquaintance of the artist. Through her portrayal, Rizaj is able to evoke the paradoxical nature of the experience of exile, which is at the same time deeply personal and dehumanising, and which is both an extremely isolating experience and one that is shared by many.​​​​