LANA ĐURĐEK

OPERATIONAL PLANNING ​​​

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April 18th - May 9th 2025

exhibition opening: Friday, April 18th at 7PM

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*in cooperation with the Office for Photography from Zagreb, which previously organized it at the SPOT Gallery in 2024.

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The Housewife is also a Manager or Supervisor

If friends from another place arrive unexpectedly around noon or in the evening, the housewife will keep them for lunch or dinner. It may happen that these unannounced guests are not entirely welcome, because the housewife has tasks to attend to, but she must not show this—she must receive them graciously, as if she had invited them herself. Friends must never feel that they have come at an inconvenient time, because the housewife must always have time for them and be ready to serve them warmly in any way she can. The housewife demonstrates great capability if she manages to handle such surprise visits even when she is not in an ideal situation to serve guests, or when she must appear kind and smiling before them after having just experienced something upsetting." The well-known Croatian author Mira Vučetić (Ogulin, 1892 – Zagreb, 1976) wrote many Croatian manuals and cookbooks that were used for generations. The main goal of her books was to instruct housewives in the most efficient and practical ways to manage work within their own homes. Mira Vučetić’s books significantly eased the everyday lives of many housewives and introduced them to the many “unwritten rules” that every woman was expected to be aware of. Furthermore, through her publications, the author helped housewives recognize the need for and importance of organized work in the household.

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In my grandmother’s apartment, I came across the books Contemporary Nutrition and Cooking (1964) and The Big Cookery Book (reprint 2013), penned by Mira Vučetić. I studied their content and instructions, read about the duties and expectations of housewives, and how the role of the homemaker, traditionally attributed exclusively to women, is defined. By photographing myself in the role of a housewife, I imitate the activities and situations described in these books as everyday female duties, that is, the duties of a housewife. The photographs are an attempt to create a link between modernity, identity and gender roles. This work, imbued with humour, is intended to make the observer think about how unrealistic and extreme the responsibilities and expectations of a housewife were, and to what extent the gender roles and social norms have changed over time, and which ones still remain today. This project allows me to look at the changes that have taken place over the past few generations and to explore the different aspects possibly still in existence today.
 

​(Lana Đurđek)

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​Lana Đurđek was born in 1999 in Zagreb, Croatia. She completed her secondary education in the Department of Photography at the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb. She then enrolled in and completed a BA in New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. In June last year, she graduated with an MFA in Photography from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, Sweden. She has participated in various group and student exhibitions in Zagreb and Gothenburg and has held three solo exhibitions to date. Lana has been an active member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists (HDLU) since 2021. Through the association, she took part in a one-month residency program titled De(construction) of the Image at Hafenkombinat in Leipzig, as well as a six-month residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, running until March 2025.