With the exhibition KOLEKTIO SAKOJ the artist Karmen JANČAR, who is living in the border town of Gornja Radgona (Bad Radkersburg) for the very first time a comprehensive presentation of her collection of plastic bags takes place. Already in her youth in the then Yugoslavia of the 1970s directly at the national border of Slovenia and Austria the artist started with the collecting. Living directly at the frontier, she has been denied participation in the raging consumerism of the West. It´s then when the collection of empty shopping bags from different countries begins and she creates her world of “content” this way.
“Sackerl”, “Plastic-” or “Nylonbag”, “shopping bags” or contemptously “Yugo- Suitcase” are just a few names for the familiar and at the same time pollutive vehicle which offers food and luxury objects a transportable cover: it´s a transport container, a contemporary reliquary for everyday life in a consumer-oriented society. In addition of being a transport container, the bag (esperanto: “SAKO”) offers a world description, which refers to the design, the form and the possible content into the virtual.
With KOLEKTIO SAKOJ, Karmen JANČAR on the one hand introduces into the world of her collection and, on the other hand, puts a casual but essential object of the consumer society into the center of the debate which is difficult to reconcile with the environment. The collection, about 7,000 objects from different periods, countries and cultural circles, presents an overview of continuities and changes in the use and aesthetics of the functional shopping bags and in the advertising media of the last decades.
