The Antilop shoe factory in Feketić

I started the project investigating the phenomenon of this place at the end of 2020. The factory building is located in the very center of Feketić and for me it has always represented a kind of monument to past, now almost forgotten, times. After the closing of the factory, many lost not only their jobs, but also, one could say, their second home.

Inspired by the stories of people whose lives were shaped by working in the factory, I have long tried to visualize the interior of this facility, the events that took place in it, as well as the people who spent their days there. All of this motivated me to look for the entrance to this abandoned memorial to find tangible traces of what this place represented. I had the feeling that I stepped into a time machine. Time seemed to stand still there. Everything was left untouched, as it was left the day the factory closed. Offices, machines, materials, shoes, and personal belongings of employees. Everything was still there, covered in a thick layer of dust, trapped in some pastime.

At first, my approach was purely documentary. The sights I found there mesmerized me and I wanted to record everything. However, over time I began to understand that the fate of the Antelope Factory is not only local but has a much wider context. This led me to experiment with different media and techniques to try to connect the different aspects of this story and delve deeper into all that it carries with it. The focus has now shifted from a clearly defined depiction of a place, frozen in time, to an exploration of the subtler, more fragile, and latent one that hides beneath the visible. The works serve as a lure and an invitation to the viewer to scratch the surface of something that only at first glance seems like an isolated case but is something quite universal.

In further work, the focus will be on former factory workers. Through their stories and experience in work during socialism, I would like to draw a parallel with the status of workers then and now, and in that way highlight the position of the working class in different social arrangements.

Tijana Borbély – www.instagram.com/borbtii/

Tijana Borbély is a young visual artist from Serbia. She was born in 2000 in Bačka Topola, and her origin is from Feketić. She is currently attending the fourth year of photography studies at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. Until now, she has exhibited her works at group exhibitions, and in addition, she has attended several photography workshops. Her works are mainly based on the documentary genre. For the past three years, she has been actively working on a project about the abandoned shoe factory „Antilop“.