Jelena Telecki Failure

Failure as performed criticality

Swerve recklessly, choose irrelevant topics, work without ‘critical’ rigour: all these actions can be considered as setting yourself up for failure. Failing, going the wrong way or getting lost can generate space for growth and astute critical reflection especially with regard to art making and exhibiting. Sydney-based artist Jelena Telecki commented that “failure in one system might not be failure in another” making the crucial point that what constitutes failure rests upon point of view and the parameters set around these judgements. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall has suggested that a view from below allows for the development of alternatives and ideas that do not fit neatly into existing structures. This performed

But success can indicate an adherence to a specific or defined set of expectations and systems, with this disciplinary correctness or critical rigour confirming what is already known according to approved methods of knowing. Operating from within these established systems cannot accommodate visionary insights and radical ideas in a way that deviating from this path, or failing, can.

For Jelena Telecki failure is a condition without confines, it is free space to imagine new ideas and possibilities; her concept of failure links inextricably with her concept of freedom. This unconstricted space allows an understanding of things as they are, in an essential way with nothing to lose, her aim becoming more focused. In a recent discussion with the artist she questioned what failing as an artist might include: commercial failure and not making artwork sales is one form, but also a lack of symbolic approval from peers and society more broadly is

Growing up during the war in the former Yugoslavia was a very difficult time, but whenever the television was turned on the rhetoric that the Serbians were “special people” would spew forth while these special people were actually starving. The story of being special or God’s chosen people despite deep hardship is not unique to Serbia and is perhaps created in an attempt to help people cope under pressure. Telecki uses failure to play on this joke in her work suggesting the realisation that we may not be as special as we think we are. Through humour, empathy and an exploration of vulnerabilities Telecki considers her own weaknesses and failings, widening this out to consider the patheticness and failings of society more broadly, as all of us want to present ourselves as special. This parallels art making, in that you may think you are really onto a special concept but later realise that it isn't anything special, it is just another idea and that can be humorous. In her 2016 painting Gimp, the gimp stands in its inflated black PVC suit, with an inflated sense of self but actually looks ridiculous in its desire to occupy this