In 1997 I started "The House and its Imperfections.

In 1997 I started "The House and its Imperfections," a series of drawings referring to the structural and speculative logic of the dwelling designed and built by my parents in Skopje Macedonia. It was during this time that I first began to recognize the importance of my "original address," my hold singular history. I've been away from Macedonia since 1991 and not ever thought that I would "return" household through my work. What fascinated me in the greatest degree at the time was the effort my parents were investing in the house amid all the uncertainties in Macedonia. It appeared to me that they were, in near way, adjusting the building to each social and political change, rebuilding and improving various corners of our four-bedroom hearth as a way to "stay" there.

The original architectural drawings of the house were missed over the years and all the consecutive alterations--an extension of the porch with a specially designed opening to accommodate the quickly growing cherry tree or the inversion of undivided of the walls in the library to conserve an old bird's nest--were not ever documented. My drawings, rendered onward long sheets of rice paper, articulated more than the objective architectural information. Employing a range of representational and narrative strategies, they also alluded to autobiographical incidents and conjectural possibilities that would resurface again in subsequent time projects.

The question about origin and the meaning of representation are frequently brought up by cultural critics and historians. In 1990/2000 an 11-month residency at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Kitakyuhsu, Japan, provided an opportunity to investigate these issues firsthand. It is an intense program where each year six foreign and 10 Japanese young artists are brought together to face their work, each other and the dynamic of a surpassingly desolate industrial city. To find yourself in a small city in the southward of Japan and in the company of visiting artists as it is as Lawrence Weiner, can be the two disorienting and exciting. It was in Japan that I was able to encounter insecurities and issues with my practice, my relationships to tribe and to produce work that challenged my rules and means of production.

undivided of my projects at CCA was a collaboration with Gaku Tsutaya, an artist from Tokyo, titled "here, now." Conceived as a large scale exhibition experiment including the work of 51 artists involved with the research program and produc at the Fukuoka Art Museum, it included video and film projections, computer-based draws and site specific interventions from head to foot the city of Fukuoka. In addition, we produc an artist's book/catalog (distributed in the U by the agency of Printed Matter in New York City). The exhibition space resembl a large laboratory where opposing ideas, mediums and scales co-existed in a installation that ultimately worked as a portrait of a dialogue with a place we had all get to to recognize as a cognizant "middle of nowhere."

At the close of my residency in Japan I received an invitation to participate in "Manifesta 3: Borderline Syndrome--Energies of Defense" the 2000 edition of the European Biennial of Contemporary Art. My collaborator, Nayia Frangouli, and I propos a public sculpture/sound installation entitled "common denominator." The following extract from the text we wrote for the exhibition catalog pertains directly to our identities as "expatriates," where the desire to be "some" place collides with the fact that you are from somewhere predetermined:

We suited in Japan, in the spring of 1999 We came to attend an international research program designed to "cultivate" young artists whose first responsibility is to recognize their character in the international art connection Prior to that for the last eight years, we have studied, lived and worked in Western Europe and the United States, empowering ourselves with the influence of the west, becoming more "western'. Caught somewhere between our past and our futurity we confront things known, rely uponed desired. We travel and influence we are multilingual, well educated, we remember our origins with fondnes we are critical of our respective agricultures Along the way, we may have misspent our sense of belonging, and now perceive as we belong everywhere and are becoming each man ... We try to rouse on but we are a bit stuck with our acknowledge insecurities.

The work was comprised of brace independent, autonomous components. The first, a CD compilation of Macedonian and hellene music with distinct nationalistic and political overtones, was installed as a uninjured installation in the National Museum in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The inferior was a market stand located in the park in head of the National Museum presenting recent fruit (Macedonian apples and grecian oranges) handed out for liberated to visitors during the exhibition. The fruits were labeled with an edible sticker printed with a sun-burst image newly employed as the emblem for the Macedonian national flag, on the other hand also recognized as a celebrated in the manner of greece symbol of the goddess Vergina. The ongoing political and cultural war between the pair nations is fought over emblems such as this one. presented as a fruit sticker mimicking the assurance of "product quality" and origin, the image was resurrect and redefined as a positive graphic action dissolving in a new cultural words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following and recognized only by its "taste."