A Muscle Fits into the Hollow of my Palm

Location: 2023. Gallery Prsten, Zagreb

The whirlwind dried up into a silence of protruding joints poking out. The muscle fits into the hollow of my palm. I lift the body that is overflowing my chest with warmth. Pink with a black dot, rumpled mounds of dry skin and thinned out white hairs that the storms laid flat. A patch of brown steeply illuminates the area below the two air openings. Veins of red streams surface from the crevices. One narrow path has been left bald, bare atop. As if bound by invisible weights flowing down onto the body from the lungs.” N.B.

The day after he was gone, I went into the forest, pressured by the bitterness and the weight on my lungs. My eyes were constantly darting around and looking back, around and ahead, searching for what they had been watching over for eight years. An emptiness lingered behind me, my view awash with salty tears, hoping for the return of what went missing. As I walked on, heavy-pettaled white flowers started appearing. Hellebore – a poisonous plant – a folk remedy for terminating pregnancies. An image of a tired gaze, asking me for help, was spinning in my mind. As if stabbed by a knife, a feeling of having betrayed him overwhelmed me. Paws and body, they are the forests and nature, while the drooping head is just like the disappearing oceans and jungles. He left too early; his body internally consumed by tumors. He was left a skeleton, a mere shadow of the dog he once was. This too is a sight we behold each day; nature fading, fires turning trees into skeletons, plastics poisoning wildlife and contaminating our oceans, seas, rivers and streams. We eat food pumped up with various artificial additives to prolong its shelf life. This is what we feed our pets with, too. We are sick, they are sick. And then what do we do? Do we give ourselves injections to fall asleep?

This piece is a participatory installation consists of poetry, drawings, sound and objects taken from nature and returned to it. It was exhibited as a part of group exhibition How to Look at Natures?-Art and the Capitalocene

“Have you ever witnessed dogs or cats adopting some of our states and illnesses? If so, share that experience in a few of sentences.
A Muscle Fits into the Hollow of my Palm-Nikolina Butorac-project image-006
A Muscle Fits into the Hollow of my Palm-Nikolina Butorac-project image-007
Nikolina-A Muscle Fits into the Hollow of my Palm