The Condition of Paper

The Condition of Paper is Maja Marković's third work (about the first work here, and about the second here) that carefully establishes the levels in which architect Zoja Dumengjić moved by designing hospital and related spaces. It is the first work Marković exhibits at the "Zoja Dumengjić" Gallery at the Clinical Centre Split, one of the most successful hospital facilities in Croatia, which has yet to be valorized in a global context. Marković began her research in the healing spheres of Zoja Dumengjić back in 2019, through a research module entitled "Care and Solidarity" of the project "Retropolis" of the Association for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Research (please visit: Research Module 1, Research Module 2, Research Module 3), realizing immediately the importance of the color spectrum in which Dumengjić operates while shaping the interior of care and care for the most vulnerable members of the community. The Condition of Paper meticulously intertwines archival paper, at the same time a symbol of the archival search for architectural works that have survived only on paper, and the fragility of human health that often gets stuck in health records overcrowded with bureaucratic drawers of medical systems, with photographs from which she deciphers the dedication with which Dumengjić sought humane dimensions of shaping for the needs of the treatment of the sick and injured – design that was approaching both the architectural and spatial planning field. Consistent with her practice of transforming two dimensions of photography into a multi-dimensional object, Maja Marković points to new interpretations of Zoja Dumengjić's care space.

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The paper mosaic on the wall of the hospital corridor, which gradually unravels, depending on the angle of view, with its quiet voluminousness and dynamic details, the strength of the composition, and the deep modulation of contrasting colors, is dedicated to the important architect of numerous health objects of late modernism in this region, Zoja Dumengjić. Through a multi-layered interpretation of the artist Maja Marković, Dumengjic's artistic and social contribution returns with her imposing design rhythm to one of her, according to numerous experts, best realizations, the General Hospital in Firule (today Clinical Centre Split). Photographs of numerous Dumengjic's buildings built in the period 1950-70s Marković has been taking on a spatial radius from Zagreb to Ploče during recent collective artistic and social research with the intention of preserving this important architectural contribution. Printed on very delicate photo paper, at first glance, the photos have been shredded into pieces of different dimensions by an unexpected artistic process that seem to have passed through a paper cutter, but contrary to the expected result, they are not destroyed but build a new condition of paper, following all the connotations related to the current state of health architecture, which Dumengjić greatly helped to build during the not so distant past. Marković returns the potential transformation of matter through time, as well as the reflections of ideological decomposition, to the test of light and social responsibility with dense visual weaving, overlapping the motifs of Dumengjic's interiors and exteriors with repurposed cardboard corners, which in their basic function serve precisely to protect subjects / objects in transport, and here to support the entire installation. The motifs are sequenced in front of spectator's eyes: hospital rooms with until recently full sea views, playful terrazzo floor, bright and soothing shades of Dumengjic's interiors designed in a socially sensitive way, which make the hospital ecosystem less burdensome for users and the work collective. Message in a bottle, medium in message: care is built and grown only through mutual attention and structural support.