Maja Uzelac Exhibition – “Second Hand Emotion”: a visual essay on the human, nature, and the society of the spectacle

Maja Uzelac’s first solo exhibition at Silosi brings a multimedia installation that explores, through video, photography, and writing, the complex connections between perception, memory, and emotion in the contemporary world. The exhibition “Second Hand Emotion” presents a visual essay on the constant and tense relationship between humans and nature, told through contemporary stereotypes and everyday rituals.

Through diptychs, triptychs, and sequences of images, the work builds eco-anxious poetry—a rhythm that condenses meaning while also slowing the flow of time. The camera, as in Maja’s film works, is present between the scene and the eye, while media narratives and internet simplifications shift in the background. The exhibition follows a witty tension between expectation and reality, with loneliness as the central emotion of the contemporary human.

As Mihael Milunović says, Maja Uzelac’s work “moves like a quiet current, following the fragile connections between perception, memory, and emotion, woven into formal and symbolic analogies that create a fabric—at once fragile and enduring—a meditation on the hidden textures of life itself.” Srđan Veljović points out that this is a “series of images taken from life, where the story tries to tame through direction while time leaks away and the future is chased.” Zorana Đaković Minniti adds that “images of bends, monuments, advertisements, signs, streets, people, and their reflections are places of refuge and tension through which we ourselves move, trying to understand what we are running from, what we aspire to, and what awaits us.”

Maja Uzelac is a director, linguist, and author known for numerous artistic and cultural projects—from the cult TV show Kulturni nokaut to award-winning music videos, fashion films, and the documentary film Ej Salaši. She is the founder of the creative studio Lava Pop and is known as a spokesperson for Belgrade, a cultural worker, and a DJ.

The exhibition’s visual identity is credited to Jakov Ponjavić.