Dialogue I, II and III is my artistic conversation with Ivan Meštrović’s artwork. Comparing the past with the present, I deconstruct the social position of woman and critically comment on construction of motherhood. Both these themes have a strong symbolic presence in Meštrovićs’ work.
Dialogue I videotapes large frames of Meštrović’s sculptures of mothers and blends them with Doppler sound of my (then) unborn child. In this way, I reduce Meštrović’s symbols to physical materiality. By revealing material vulnerability of sculptures, I examine physical aspects of motherhood and the lapse of time.
Dialogue II is focused to formation of identity and social constructions of motherhood and childhood. Children’s rotating lamp is engraved with 89th Article of Croatian Family Law. Situated next to Meštrović’s sculpture Mother teaches her child how to pray, the lamp projects the text throughout the room. In this way, contemporary State interventions into the relationship between the mother and the child become introduced into the room where Meštrović’s family lived over a century ago. In this way, the work shows temporal and cultural relativity of social construction of motherhood and childhood..
Dialogue III audio-records one day in my life in the role of the mother. Situated next to Meštrović’s sculpture Olga Meštrović nurses Tvrtko, audio documentation points toward the eternal nature of woman’s everyday life as a mother.
Video documentation of exhibition Dialogue I, II i II, Meštrović Atelier, Zagreb, Croatia, 2014