Jelena Prokopović

Visual artist

Decadence 2021

After the ambient installation Habitat, my artistic research continues with a series of portraits called Decadence. In this series, I deal with the issue of antiheroes, more precisely with emotions that are negatively perceived due to the impossibility of proper articulation. They are unacceptable to society and as such are often demonized and marginalized.

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What happens when an individual fails to meet the expectations of society? When he falls into deep introversion? Is society ready to accept the helplessness of an individual and help him in that hopelessness, or will it gladly accuse the unfortunate victim? It seems to me that we all have an empirical answer to this question, so my focus is on the state of consciousness of the rejected individual. In that sense, I achieve decadence through a portrait, which is the basic form of identification of an individual through the face. I put emphasis on it as a hero, who is faced with the biggest problem, that is with himself. With an inspiration of a Magic Realism, I remove characters from this world, as a kind of escape from the reality, but I build on their previous work in order to expand the Habitat by building new characters and characters in that special universe.


Each of these portraits is a person from my life who, directly or indirectly, had left a significant impact on me. I strive to create an atmosphere and character through them that will justify a particular emotion as such.