Gaslightning — Ljubomir Popović

Ljubomir Popović

Ljubomir Popović (1987, SE/RS) is an artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. Popović holds a BFA in Fine arts at Gerrit Rietveld Academie & the University of Applied arts in Vienna. Currently doing his MA at Konstfack. Previously shown works at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Festung Hohensalzburg, Salzburg and Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm.

By observing cities’ continuous and dynamic growth Popovic navigates through changing urban peripheries. Maintaining mobility as a performative process allows one to zoom in, witness and expose the later stages of gentrification and its power structures. It is a socially unfair process of pushing away local inhabitants in areas of segregation.

Popovic addresses junctions and in-between spaces. To trail for plastics and metals with vibrant colours that function as protective safety elements. Ripping out papers from ads, cutting in plastics to create stacks and collages, which mimic and trace the forms of repetitive structures of consumerism towards its collapse.

By collecting materials as archeological objects, Popovic displaces them from their context as an act of civil disobedience against the gentrification processes. Creative destruction, and its ruin value articulates a critical approach to the capitalist framework of gentrification.

Words from the artist

Street orientation

Co-existing as an artist in a material world, where we both live and create within the city, we orientate and recognize where to position ourselves concerning both our physical and social surroundings. It is important to acknowledge an interrelation throughout the urban periphery and observe the hidden gaps of streets and architecture. That is when we witness the harsh damage from dramatic changes in the abandoned industrial area or the city’s everchanging construction sites.

Material hunt

The orientation takes place with a set goal: the hunt for material embodied in urban change. By looking at the network of streets and new buildings, when a site has been identified, the spotting of material begins as an investigation of the urban change and its materiality.

Looting the contruction site

The goal is not to destroy or sabotage but to create a breathing moment, where the site has a chance to stop and reflect on the missing pieces. To provide a reason to step back from the city’s pulse, consumption, and drastic change, To remove the material from its intended purpose and reveal it from within its hidden timeframe.

The type of objects the artist look for when she collect

It is an artistic choice to oppose and strive for equilibrium and a healthy universal utopia. We research and take out of context. Recreate shapes into dynamic capabilities, carrying the responsibility of a critical approach towards what is taken out from our society’s disposal and exploited cityscape.