ABOUT ART WORK

The cycle of Daliborka Đurić's (Pesić's) works entitled "Self-portrait, insight and realization", based on questioning of self-identity and research of possibility of using the traditional technique (embroidery) in contemporary (postmodern) art. By interweaving her image with famous icon images from the world of art, music and film (Merlyn Monroe, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Nick Cave), the author visualizes (the inner) states of her body which is settled by different identities. Changeability and mobility of body/identity is performed by embroidery on the surface of white canvas (towel) which once was used as decoration for mirror or wall. Questions about the identity and possibilities of performing the embroidery in time when art is more and more connected to new technologies find the answer by recalling philosophical postulates of Spinoza and Monteigne and postmodern/feminist postulate of Deles and Liz Irigarai.

In his philosophical postulates Spinoza pointed out that our body feels and is enormously sensitive to other bodies. Through the body are passing images of the most different bodies which have ever touched it, changing, composing and decomposing it. In that way body is composed of many individuals (of a different nature), which are moving, or standing still, attracting or rejecting among themselves. It can be said that body dies all the time, and with this dying gives birth to new forms, and new shapes which can not escape from new reshaping and new changing. "It seems to me that I escape from myself all the time", says Monteigne, "I am moving and changing constantly and therefore I cant say anything about me, because I, for myself am not definite, I am infinity inside one finality, I am finality endlessly changeable, endlessly unstable. I can not stop myself, Myself can not be stopped, Myself tatters in the swirl of changing, in constant change of my face, my body, my shape, Myself is endlessly reshaping, testifying about non-existing of stability..."

The philosophical postulates about changeable bodies and unstable identities continues Delis, Developing the theory about constant processes of subjects' existence. Becoming, for Delis means possibility of causing in body relations of moving and standing, of speed and dilation, which are the closest to what one becomes and through what becomes. Diverse shapes of existence can be classified into a formation or progression which starts with the becoming-woman, which is a key of all others becoming and which is followed by all the others becomings (becoming-animal, becoming-vegetal, becoming-mineral...). In that way a woman and a man start a chain of becoming, passing through a state (phase) of becoming-woman, by which is impaired the established opposition of manhood and feminity. About the specifity of feminine existence speaks also Liz Irigarai, pointing out the fluid style of feminine speech which resist to any firmly established form, figure, idea or concept. "A woman puts herself into a constant excange with others without any possibility of indetification... Therefore a woman never speaks in the same way, because the thing she emits is flow, fluctuation, mistiness..." inviting woman to "write themselves", Liz Irigarai develops the idea of feminine writing/speaking which will bring back woman their body, sexuality and natural strength.

The exposed theoretical postulates of changeability and mobility of (feminine) body/identity, are present in works of Daliborka Đurić (Pešić). The idea of sensitive body which contains the images of others bodies which have touched and changed it are shown through interpretation of the image of the author herself and famous images from the world of art, music and film. The areas of interfering (similarities) of her image with the images of Merlyn Monroe, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo and Nick Cave, have been found in the eyes, eyebrows and hair, the areas which represent "border" and "reconnecting" points of conjuction between bodies inside and outside. The endless reshapings of authors body/identity which testify of non existence of constancy have also been emphasized with white, empty canvas which had been left untouched. This blankness and emptiness doesn't mean the surface without anything, but a surface which has a potential to become filled by the abundance of images which are in constant process of becoming, moving and changing. By becoming Merlyn Monroe, Frida Kahlo, but also Nick Kave, and Vincent van Gogh, the artist impairs her becomings, impairs the established man-woman opposites. She emphasizes this by her description of her image with a bear and mustache, but also through a symbolic description of cutting the strands of her hair. By her becoming a woman and becoming a man the author adds her becoming an animal (a deer), but also her becoming invisible (a description of dress without a body). The confronting with her physical and psychical transformations, the artist achieves also through a technique of work (the embroidery) and material (the strands of a thread). The embroidery has a symbolic meaning of meditatively, because asks for patience in work which is being performed in time and also a sensualism considering that is being performed through movements and touches of hand and materials. The strands of thread means the softness of material which has a symbolic meaning of "half state" between the firmness of a crystal and non-material fluidness of flow/radiance of energy.

By causing the sense of softness, warmth, frailty and transformation, the strands of thread which are interlacing by the embroidery technique, are inviting to a tactile perception which can become the foundation for one different (feminine) way of speacing and writing. In that way (a feminine) embroidery of changeable becomings, can bring in a "new" view and "different" thinking in the art, which is today more and more based on achievements of digital media and computer technologies.

mr Olivera Erić

tekst prevela-translation: Vesna Ristić