The exhibition “Repurposing: Space and Word” by artist Irena Lagator Pejović, curated by Natalija Vujošević, has opened at the Gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro. The exhibition will remain open to the public until June 21, 2026.

The project is the artist’s response to curator Natalija Vujošević’s invitation to reflect, through the space and example of the MSUCG Gallery, on the legacy of architect Svetlana Kana Radević, as well as on the relationship towards the environment, architectural and social heritage, “transition,” and intergenerational solidarity.

Set within the building of the former Lexicographic Institute of Montenegro, originally designed by Svetlana Kana Radević and later repurposed over time, the exhibition raises questions about the memory of space, layers of decisions, compromises, and forgetting, exploring the relationship between original function and contemporary spatial transformations. Through research, conversations, and artistic interventions, the project illuminates the complex connections between labour, institutions, and the public good, considering architecture as an ethical and social act.

Avoiding monumentalisation and representative narratives, the exhibition focuses on the lesser-known projects of Svetlana Kana Radević developed in collaboration with socially owned enterprises, pointing to architecture as a practice shaped within specific social and production conditions. Central to the exhibition are also the architect’s own words: “All decisions are made for people, in the name of people. In the past, architects worked for individuals; today, they work for society. The relationship between society and art is highly interactive.”

Through a shared field of thought and dialogue between the artist, the curator, and project collaborator and conservator Nađa Baković, “repurposing” is reconsidered as a methodology of correction and of rehearsing a return to sociality through direct action, in opposition to the performative practices of neoliberalism.