'Jakub Jansa: SHAME TO PRIDE (Club of Opportunities, ep. 7)' by Jakub Jansa at Mocvara Gallery, Zagreb

Since 2017, as part of his multimedia art practice, Jakub Jansa has been continuously developing a long-term exhibition project entitled Club of Opportunities, of which he has already exhibited six installments. The entire series is a complex and multilayered story, set in the artist’s “vegesociety,” a universe in which viewers follow a celery root’s tumultuous fate, as a member of a disregarded social class. Young Celeriac decides to reject the fate marked by the protective Science or him and others of his “caste,” and achieve what none before him has done – break into the ranks of the social elite, which, in Jansa’s world, is represented by the exotic and unattainable Avocado.

The 7th episode of the Club was made for the Jindřich Chalupecký Award 2021 exhibition. It portrays Celeriac again in a surprising situation: he has symbolically moved up within the vegesociety and been invited into Avocado circles. However, he cannot relate internally to this new social class and, despite the respect he has earned, feels no sense of belonging with anyone around him. At the same time, he has already broken ties with his home environment. He experiences an intense feeling of rootlessness and the only thing that can help is a coming out of his class. He discovers that he must create a completely new social category for the members of the vegesociety who are like himself; the vegetables that have been ripped from their roots and seek their true selves. In this latest Club episode, we learn an important lesson, namely, that “Shame is a weapon!”.