Tag Archives: socially engaged art

Blurred in their non-existence

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Performative action, supported by Domino Association, in public square ”Cvjetni trg” in Zagreb/ December 2022.

The action of wrapping the monument is a continuation of the work in which I collected people’s statements about  rising food prices and local, climate-neutral food. Entering into a conversation with random passers-by, I became aware that a large number of people daily do not have the possibility of a cooked, hot meal. The topic of poverty is primarily neglected, and there are no concrete and consistent solutions to address this problem. The fact that restaurants that want to donate food have to pay VAT on the donation is devastating, as is the fact of how much food is wasted in large stores. The crisis of rising food and energy prices will create a new wave of poverty. Through the gesture of wrapping monuments with cheap, thin paper, in a symbolic way, I cover some parts of them to attract the attention of passers-by. On the piece I wrapped, as well as on the thicker cardboard, which partly looks like a banner for an imagined protest, I write my own poem in prose, inspired by the collected stories of people.

Under the branches of withered will

Blinking tremors mirror their flash

Passing within unknown crowd

Threads twisted, gray, gravitating

Bending for articles from the back shelves

Counting the outlines of the shadows with their irises

Heads looking deeply down

Drowned by public criticism

Swallowing malaise

Under the branches of withered will

Drawing an internal scream

Without a warm meal, building a shame

And while the rays of that same shame spread

To our fridges bombarded with food

We allow, we do not react

Our senses are numb

We are rotting like a thousand pieces

Of unsold fruit and broken gifts

Blurred in their non-existence

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The river in me; the river around me

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Wanting to learn more about the past of the Sava River, Nikolina Butorac led workshops in two nursing homes in Trešnjevka, asking the protégés to associatively draw a positive memory for her; the smell of the river, the water that called for bathing, the plants that grew near it. She composes the resulting works into new collages, which follow the photographs of Gail Hocking’s artistic interventions in the empty riverbeds of South Australia, reminding us of the great droughts, shortages of drinking water and fires that have become more prevalent in recent years. Part of the work are artifacts, created by a symbiosis of natural and artificial, taken from several different places that the artists addressed important for their research. At the opening, Nikolina Butorac handed out blank papers to the audience, asking them to draw or write a new work that would protect the river and raise awareness of the importance of water, and hung their drawings among other works.

Gallery FELTSpace in Adelaide, December 2021

Pacify of Shivers-Exhibition of the Earthquake Artifacts

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Exploring personal discomforts and fears initiated by the earthquake experience,I conducted a series of workshops in Zagreb’s libraries. Workshop participants are invited to engrave or print their feelings on objects from their flats that have fallen and been damaged in the earthquake, making the everyday object not only a direct conduit of emotion, a place of rebellion or frustration but also a point in communication, the intersection of different narratives. These objects, collected through several months of artistic action, have become a kind of anti-souvenirs that recorded a common experience, becoming a well-known place and point of recognition of the community of citizens affected by the earthquake. I exhibit them in a glass case, which on the one hand musealizes them, and on the other contrary to the exhibition rules, pushes, twists, stacks broken plates and jugs, building a space of tension between the value and worthlessness of things, artifacts and everyday objects. On some of them, the owners have written a critique of inert city and state structures. In this twisting of the inner outwards, the intimate feeling turns into a collective and, indirectly, a dedication to the city; “wounded city”, writes one of the participants in the workshops. I’m using the scaffolding on the front of the Gallery building, which, precisely because of the slow and long construction work, this time related to the energy renovation of the building, is out of its function. The third segment of the work was my performance at the opening. I’m writing the names of the streets damaged in the earthquake on the construction helmet, and visitors are helping me. The helmet – the index of damaged locations – is invested in the display case among other items.

Home Displaced

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AK Gallery- Koprivnica

2020

The exhibition “Home Displaced” consists of several segments: a net made of almonds that connects parts of the installation, children’s statements written in pencil on paper, audio recording of the working experience outside of state, stones with recipes against problematic phenomena in society and opening performance.

 The inscriptions were created as a result of my interaction with pupils, whose parents or close family members went to work abroad. Their task was to write a text and turn the shapes and sizes of letters into emotions, focusing on a family member they missed the most.

The audio work records my cousin’s experience. He moved to America as a ballet dancer and retrained as a computer programmer. Here again, I deal with the situation of cultural workers and artists whose position in society is often marginalized, requiring a superhuman skills in order to survive. In the ‘’exchange’’ participatory performance from the opening, I’m asking visitors to write in  two to three sentences something about their experiences of working abroad. Who does not want to write, can also draw. I’m putting paper plates, a wooden board, dried fruit in front of me and I start to mix dates, cranberries, dried figs, coconut with rice milk into an edible thick mixture, whom which I form one word from their text, or a drawing. In this exchange, each of the visitors receives an edible artifact. The performance act of preparing and consuming food, is an intimate ritual that functions as a metaphor for sharing, recording and exchanging personal stories.   

in(visible) nomads/emptiness of home

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2019

Culture Center KNAP, Gallery Događanja, Zagreb

“Curious head is squinting flats with grey bricks. The associations are cluttering through the needle with the drops of adrenaline, blurring the little mirrors in my chest. Stepping over the color of distrust and reservation. Mind cuddling. Breathing out the plan.”

In this piece, I study the term “habitation” as a passive everyday action, and focus on homes as fictional objects that are impossible to be afforded by young people today. I interviewed friends who live in rented homes or with their parents, asking them to tell me a story about their living space. At one point, we bring to mind the socialist working class, i.e. our parents and grandparents, who were given their homes by their respective companies because they were valuable as workers.

I focus on comparing the past and the present as two opposite poles. Today, a company providing a home for its employee is considered pure fantasy.

With no money to afford our own home, possibilities open up for a taste of life in other countries. However, I cannot help but wonder whether we really want to do it, or whether we are merely forced into it? If we have other options – which are they?

While the interviews are emitted through speakers and a megaphone, I make an edible mixture of dried fruit, shaped in the form of my parents’ flat.

Facing a wall – this time not the one at home, but rather the impossibility of achievement – I share my frustration and helplessness with the audience by breaking the edible supporting walls of an unfulfilled dream and offering them to the public, hoping that one day it becomes

Link to audio: https://soundcloud.com/user-2799856