A family member told me once: ‘Ti si bija baš sritno dite.’ (You really were a happy kid.). This site-specific spatial installation is collection of materialized sensory memories from a moment in childhood. At the same time, it is a record of nervous gestures, of the ritual of cleaning, scratching, peeling. A channel for anxious energy that is released pathologically, because no one ever showed it where to go. It is also about music you can’t hear—perhaps best evoked through the visceral reaction of the body and mind when you catch the scent of a long-forgotten perfume and shivers rush over you. The starting point of the work is an event, chronologically blurred, yet so vividly etched. There is singing. It is hot. You are being watched. Fingers in your pockets try to reach your thigh bone. The skin resists. It burns. You do not feel it. You are fine.
List of objects:
- Handsewn replica of the artist’s first communion garment suspended and enclosed in marquisette
- Digitally treated and printed photograph (14.85 x 21cm) combined with text on a used school chair
- Fourteen pieces of sand paper treated with chalk and charcoal suspended on metal clips (28 x 23 cm)
- Four red fibre broom brushes (7.5 x 40 cm)
- Three photographs from personal archive (A Boy Blows Candles, A Boy Sleds, A Boy Cleans) (10.2 x 15.2 cm)
- Analog photograph of a deteriorating house (14.85 x 21cm; Kodak Ektar H35)
- Choir song book Dođi Gospodine Isuse – Pjesmarica za susrete, molitve i mise s mladima treated with correction fluid and mounted on a pedestal
- Artist’s journal writings printed on 170 gsm paper (10.5 x 14.8 cm) and sorted in six piles
- Specially installed pink-hue insulation flooring
Space / Brigada Design Studio – Showroom
Curator / Antonela Solenički
Photography / Juraj Vuglač
Acknowledgements / Damjan Geber, Kristina Volf, Antonela Solenički, Nika Šimičić, Marina Mršić, Lucija Jukić, Martina Kolar, Vedran Husremović, Damir Žižić, Milka Kresović and Ivan Kresović
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You Really Were a Happy Child is an artistic intervention produced for 2025 European Month of Creativity in collaboration with Croatian Association of Fine Artists, within the EU project CreART 3.0 – Takeover 2025 in Zagreb, Croatia (https://takeover.hdlu.hr)