Burstly Present/Guests in the Throat

 

Museum of Etnography, Zagreb, 2026. Curator: Željka Petrović Osmak

City of Zagreb Museum Gallery, 2025. Curators: Maja Pavlinić & Suzana Marjanić

Gallery o.k. Rijeka, 2024. Curator: Marta Sirotich

Technique: Mixed media, drawings on fabric, installation using earthen materials, screen printing on mirrors, print on fabric
Dimensions: 3 × 2 m (dimensions are not strictly defined)

Burstly Present/Guests in the Throat is a multimedia installation inspired by the lives of environmental activists who fought to protect ecosystems and the rights of Indigenous communities. The piece includes ten mirrors on a table, various artefacts such as dried insect bodies, three types of soil, animal bones, dried mushrooms, drawings on cotton, and an interactive QR code leading to a short survey for collecting ideas and experiences related to the climate crisis. The names of women activists are: Monta & Pranee, Adelinda Gomez, Aura Ester, Berta Caceras, Mama Fikile, Gladys del Estal, Gloria Capitan, Jane Tipson, Jill Phipps, Leonor Vasquez, Macarena Valdes, Nasreen Huq, Nazaria, Nicinha,  Jeannet Kawas, Regan Rusell, Liliana Chocue, Ze Claudio Ribeiro da Silva&Maria Ribeiro da Silva.

Guests in the Throat ” 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.
 Through this work, Butorac reflects on entrenched patriarchal patterns and emphasises the importance of women environmental defenders – indigenous and human rights activists. These women from various classes and ethnic backgrounds gave their lives to protect our Terra. Their contributions will not be forgotten. As a bright spot of this research, the Brave Women of Kruščica stand out—a group of activists from Bosnia and Herzegovina who, with incredible energy, persistence, organisation, and consistency, defended the Kruščica River near the village of Vitez from the construction of a small hydropower plant, and in 2021 received the Goldman Environmental Prize.