Pavle Golijanin

WORK

Culinary Intervention

Keške1, found Howitzer brass shell, metal wedge, self-published cookbook, 1992–ongoing

Culinary intervention Making of Keške in collaboration with my grandmother 𝑅𝒶𝒹𝓂𝒾𝓁𝒶

Ingredients:

2 kg wheat
Whole chicken
Water
Salt
Tools:
Found howitzer brass shell
Modified crowbar

Keške is a traditional dish from central Bosnia, particularly the Sarajevo region, with roots likely tracing back to Turkey, where it was proclaimed part of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2011. Remarkably, in Bosnia,it is served equally among Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Catholics. For my family, Keške is the main dish on the Christmas table. During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a grenade shell was transformed by my father into an improvised mortar, turning this object into a symbolic artifact, a meeting point of the personal and the geopolitical, tradition and adaptation, war and peace, resistance and resilience. Since then, this improvised mortar has been used every year to prepare keške, establishing continuity of the family ritual while simultaneously emphasizing how objects acquire new meanings within specific historical circumstances.

UNESCO https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/ceremonial-kekek-tradition-00388

Ꭰꮎꮇꭺćꮖ ꮶꮎꮮꭺčꮖ

print on linen, 129 × 97 cm, 1998/2024

Cookbook, pen, 1999.

Cookbook, felt pen, 1999.

Tin, 2024.

This series draws directly from memories, situations, dialogues, and, materially, from the drawings I made as a child in the cookbooks my mother collected. These cookbooks served as both a guide in learning to draw and a means of communication between us. It was a dynamic akin to that of an artist and a critic. Was she collecting cookbooks, or was she collecting my drawings? They became an open field for practice, alteration, and reinterpretation, shaping my early visual language and the way I engaged with images and text.

Easy pieces, paintings

One More Please, acrylic on canvas, 200x135 cm, 2025.
Ray, acrylic on canvas, 200x135 cm, 2025.
CIg, acrylic on canvas, 200x135 cm, 2025.
2440m, acrylic on canvas, 200x135 cm, 2025.
A Horse Walks Into a Bar, acrylic on canvas, 200x135 cm, 2025.
Instalation view
During the classical music concert at the gallery
Instalation view

Architecture of Mastery

The Architecture of Mastery is a series of collaborative works created in my father’s workshop. Over the course of a few months, we built one grill and three gas ovens for burek, including this oven, which was later exhibited in a gallery. This collaboration explores the transmission of knowledge, the learning of practical skills, communication between father and son, spontaneity, and behavioral principles within the workshop space. Besides the collaboratively made oven, which is both functional and artistic, other works emerged during the process: documentary forms, photographs, painted welding glass, equipment, and sculptures created through the accumulation of metal shavings. The entire work process was recorded, resulting in a video essay. In this way, the tradition of craftsmanship is celebrated. My father appreciated this validation through the gallery exhibition; until then, the main form of validation had been purely practical—whether an oven baked well or not.

Pavle Golijanin exhibits an object – a bakery oven, handmade in his father’s family workshop. He achieves narrativity through artistic documentation (photographs and videos) and visual art objects created in the same workshop. The artist connects the craft and creative process with the transfer of knowledge, skills, and rituals, which are key elements of family identity in a time when traditional values are being lost under the pressure of consumerism. (Amra Ćebić)

https://www.eflux.com/announcements/677636/invisible-tissue

Instalation view, KRAK, Bihać, 2025.

From the Family Photo album

Microarchives, 2021-ongoing

I collect the incandescent metal filings created during grinding. These fiery
remnants are carefully transformed into small, accidental sculptures, tiny archives of intense labor and
energy.