Burstly Present/Guests in the Throat

Gallery o.k. Rijeka, 2024.

City of Zagreb Museum Gallery, 2025.

Nikolina Butorac exhibits Burstly Present/Guests in the Throat, a multimedia installation inspired by the lives of environmental activists who fought to protect ecosystems and Indigenous communities rights. The piece includes ten mirrors on a table, various artifacts such as dried insect bodies, three types of soil, animal bones, dried mushrooms, and an interactive QR code leading to a short survey for collecting ideas and experiences related to the climate crisis.
Guests in the Throat by Nikolina Butorac is a deeply reflective and engaged work that addresses the courage and sacrifice of environmental women warriors worldwide.
It highlights the value of soil as a rich ecosystem, which is daily, invasively, and irreversibly devastated by industries. Due to deforestation, intensive agriculture, and livestock farming for meat, we are losing soil up to 40 times faster than it can regenerate, with devastating consequences for our fight against climate change and global food production.
The narrative of food, recorded throughout history, is essentially a mirror of the aggressive and vain activities of the dominant white man, elevated above all others. Through this work, Butorac reflects on entrenched patriarchal patterns and emphasizes the importance of women environmental defenders – indigenous and human rights activists, women from various classes and ethnic backgrounds, who gave their lives to protect our Terra. Their contributions will not be forgotten. Written by curator Marta Sirotich.

The piece is a part of the group exhibition named Terra Incognita by three independent artists, Jatun Risba, Ivana Filip, and myself. The exhibition explores complex relationships between individuals, ecology, anthrozoology, artistic activism, and sustainable practices through various media and a feminist perspective, encouraging deep introspection and socially responsible action.

For the Zagreb exhibition, I’ve included a story of a young man named Antoni, who protested alone against the destruction of Mount Kozjak a total of 36 times. Thirty-one times he protested on Ban Jelačić Square, under the statue, where he usually sat for 4-5 hours a day holding a banner.

His story is encapsulated in the form of an intimate letter, accompanied by facts from newspaper articles that explain his deep sadness.