The Builder Daughter is a body of work, succession of iterations where Jelena Fužinato negotiates with art institutions to set up an alternative entrance point into them. Rooted in autoethnographic practice, the work draws on the artist's own lived experience of navigating institutional spaces, questioning who they are built for, and where the thresholds of access truly lie. Negotiation is at its core, because it superposes the positions of power and powerlessness and shapes the final visual outcome of the work.

Here, the installation held both visual elements and served as a stage for the performative build-up and take-down of the scaffolding structure. The artist, accompanied by two performers, constructed the scaffolding in front of the audience. Rather than entering through sanctioned doors, the scaffolding became a means of locating and opening a non-designated passage into the museum: a self-made threshold that physically challenged the fixed architectures of institutional access.

Once erected, the structure served multiple functions simultaneously, as an alternative entrance into the museum space, as seating for a panel discussion, and as a supporting display for sculptures and related works from the Builder's Daughter series.

Assistance: Adrijana Gvozdenović, Neda Kovinić
Photography: Julia Merkel, Marcelina Wellmer
Videography: Andrzej  Raszyk