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Slaven Tolj
Untitled, 2003

Installation view: Brightness, Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik (MoMAD), Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2003
Photo: Zvone Pandza

Slaven Tolj

Collection

Video documentation and artefacts from the performance at the Modern Gallery in Dubrovnik on July 9, 2003

Single-channel video installation (documentation of performance, color, silent), electric cable with bulbs
15 min (video)
Overall dimensions variable

Tolj’s projects invariably refer to his native Dubrovnik — its society, geometry, and future. A recurrent theme in his diverse and interventionist practice is the reality of pain and the conditions of war. He uses art as a cathartic instrument, capable of expressing the many facets of emotion and sensation. His performances radicalize the artistic act by examining the grammar of pain and endurance, surpassing distinctions between the physical and psychological. In his performance Dubrovnik-Valencia-Dubrovnik, having recently returned from the battlefield, Tolj, undressed to the waist, peels off 12 layers of clothing. Each layer has black buttons attached, as mementos of perished friends. From the final layer, he tears off one black button and sews it directly to his chest as an ironic medal. He also uses light repeatedly, not only as a metaphor for the pursuit of enlightenment but also, in its paler shades, to convey entropy and melancholy. In Line, 8th February 2003, an intervention into the city’s Disney-like festive illumination of the old harbor, Tolj added a single line of lights, decorating an area of the harbor that had recently collapsed into the sea. Revealing a part of the city expected to remain hidden, his action was intended to undercut the escapist idyll. In an untitled documented performance, Tolj used the same material, a cable of 39 lights, corresponding to his age, which he wrapped around his body. Unwinding the cable, he extinguished the bulbs one by one as they burned his skin, so that in the end he remained in darkness and silence. The artist describes the action as a reversal of the narrative of his life, exploring ideas of disappearance and suicide while also ridding himself of the restrictions of the closed circle of the festively illuminated walls of the city. — Soraya Rodriguez

*1964 in Dubrovnik, Croatia | Living and working in Dubrovnik, Croatia

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