Life II [in Progress]

Published by Maska Ljubljana, the International Centre of Graphic Arts Ljubljana and Live Art Development Agency, 2014

17cm x 24cm, 192 pages, paperback with colour photographs throughout

Trade Orders: Central Books, see our Distribution page for more information

Life II [in Progress] is based on an ongoing, long-term project that repeats a single-staged sequence year in and year out.

The publication accompanies a group of women through pregnancy and motherhood, creating full-figure images which confront the viewer. These images of naked, pregnant women and nursing mothers with their children arouse feelings of joy and empathy whilst at the same time expresses uncertainty by their repetition and lack of completion, raising fundamental, existential questions as to why and how to live.

“There is a deeply philosophical, and melancholic, dimension to the way in which Janša flirts with the oblivion of time by defining a project that involves the staging of a situation repeatedly into an unknowable future. Far more than a simple art encounter (whatever that may mean), the project in its iterations – as staged, live event as well as life-sized photographs – unfolds over time as an opportunity for engaging not only with other bodies, including the radically strange bodies of pregnant women, but with our own aging and mortality.” Amelia Jones, 2014

Contributors include Adrian Heathfield, Tim Etchells, Mladen Dolar, Amelia Jones and Aldo Milohnić with full-colour images by Nada Žgank and design by Ajdin Bašić.