Trying to Grow Wings

Bending Instead of Breaking

Undoubtful greatness of the solid Renaissance - the big explosion of light and creativity -  centuries later and during the historical anomaly such as pandemic - the collective involuntary lifequake -  still attracts humans like bees to honey. But even in Florence - a heterotopia - a place in which simultaneously various epochs co-exist with not too many contradictions, the function of contemporary art is to transcend rather than to mimic and worship the inherited realities. Add to these complexities the fact that in the great transition from humanities to digital humanities, the identification with the normative Rennaisance subject, the so called non-inclusive Vitruvian man, his institutions and his materiality, needs to be reconsidered.

 While the collective consciousness materialises a fantasy, wider than reality,  by regressing to Renaissance structures and modes of conduct, Ana Vujović investigates if it is the historical structures and/or the idea of a Vitruvian man that is broken. Her artistic practice is initially conditioned to the materiality of things found in the architecture of MAD, as a plateau of various becomings (the convent turned into a prison turned into an art institution, as well as the typical Florentine materials such as silk and paper). However, following her inherent, recognizable and reconfirmed artistic method, Vujović focuses all over again on the potentiality of transcendence. Delicately, her entire project is not based on totally breaking free from the fundamentals. Instead, her artistic intervention is still glued to the materiality of inherited structures (architecture, materials, ideologies), in a sense that her intervention bends around the context and plays with finesses of textures and structures. She suggests that the  legacy of the broken Vitruvian man (his cosmography of the microcosm) should be paradoxically gently  approached from the point of perspectivism grounded in inherited institutions and tackled by means of working with material foundations.

 It is by introducing birds as a symbol, in this case a non-gendered animality other to humans, that Vujović breaks away from the paradigm of the Vitruvian man. On one hand, the  heteronormative subject is loaded with relationships of power, his established institutions of both convent, prison and art gallery.  On the other hand, an idea of a necessity to grow wings radiates from the non-material symbolism of  birds. The idea of taking off, the anticipation of the lines of flight thus emanates through the exhibition in which the vibration of suspense points out to the creative affirmation of difference.

 It seems at first glance  that Vujović breaks away from a broken, disoriented and destabilised human subject. She disidentifies with him and his institutions in order to explore the limitations and possibilities by navigating the transition away from the establishment to the yet unknown. However, taking off, in this case, actually means to reach out towards apotential perspective, while coming to terms with what has been grounded in the normativity of inherited materialism, and the institutional rules and regulations. Like a bird applying the aeroflexible aerodynamics, Vujović's grows a muscle to materiality of silk and paper. Her take off is paradoxically yet sensitively achieved by means of many bending moves,frozen in moments of an attempt to break free.

Maja Ćirić, PhD
Independent Curator and Art Critic

Sharing Light With The Past

As anyone who visited Trying to Grow Wings by Ana Vujovic in Florence could realize, a palpable tension impacts the viewer from the beginning to end of this sound and visual narrative enrobed in iconic historic symbols.

In the MAD Murate Art Centre indoor stage of the installation, the sound scape commissioned to sound artist Mija Milovic, suggested a trapped bird, echoing the MAD surroundings – once a convent and, later, a jail- communicating a sense of tightness and angst. From the first act of the installation, outdoor, under the MAD’s porch, despite the sounds of a convivial nature that surround us - voices, clanging cutlery, an almost festive aura- the deserted, worn table, surmounted by an empty birdcage, hanging off bright blue silk thread, we are already on edge, expecting some uncanny developments.

Later, the improbable lines designed by the majestic nine meters of unfolding silk in the main area of the exhibit, the precarious balance of the paper sculptures and bas-reliefs, the odd escapes and fugues layered in paper in unexpected places in the other three spaces, all conspired to suggest a constant attempt at flying away as well as to prompt a desire to celebrate freedom.

From the outdoor installation to its indoor chapters, Trying to Grow Wings presents itself as a daring storytelling, defying all expectations of narrative continuity but dazzling us with visual artwork in silk and paper that constantly refer us to another narrative, one that seems to be folded in the plies of history.

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