Maja Bojanić project unfolds through the Institute for Mold Preservation, a fictional laboratory that asks what preservation might look like if processes of decay, rather than prevailing notions of value, governed what counts as worth keeping. The Institute investigates, monitors, and studies the spread of black mold within museums, galleries, libraries, archives, and their storage spaces. Through site-specific performative storytelling, she situates the Institute across different formats and contexts, using it to leak information gathered about local rot. Its activities take the form of installations, videos, publications, lectures, and fabricated research materials that blur the boundaries between scientific documentation, institutional discourse, and fiction.

Black mold becomes significant precisely through its resistance to control: repeatedly eradicated in the name of preservation, it nevertheless persists. Rather than understanding decay as synonymous with loss, Maja Bojanić considers deterioration and transformation as processes capable of producing new meanings and relationships. The project therefore opens up possibilities for forms of preservation that accommodate instability, change, and disappearance rather than attempting to prevent them.

Photo: Maja Bojanić & Brin Žvan, Struggles Beyond Repair, 2025, extended video game. Photo: Katja Goljat / Društvo LJUDMILA, Ljubljana.