MADONNA TO FISH

Urban intervention with closed-circuit video focused the topic of religion. Zadar, Croatia, 2001

In cooperation with the Franciscan Monastery, Zadar.

On August 15, the Feast of the Assumption, which is widely celebrated in Dalmatia, we set up an underwater installation featuring a white, illuminated Madonna-figure on the seabed. We also regularly sprinkled fish food on the surface of the site to attract fish. An underwater camera recorded the area around the figure on the seabed.

Visitors were invited to the Franciscan monastery over three evenings to observe the fish encountering the Madonna, via a video projection on the outside church wall.

The light and food attracted the fish at fairly regular intervals throughout the three evenings. During the evening, the visitors waited in patient anticipation in the atrium of the monastery, sometimes for an hour.

This work is one in the series on the topic of religion I have created mostly in 1990s inspired by the ambivalent relation to religion in post-communist countries. In this case, I wanted to include the notions of nature and other creatures in our reflection. My intention was as well as to create poetic images that could potentially challenge the politization of religion and faith which dominated Croatian public discourse at the time.

CREDITS 
The work was commissioned in the frame of the Zadar Live Festival.
Curator: Iva Radmila Janković. Cooperation Partners: Franciscan Monastery, Zadar.
Photos: Kristina Leko.

GENRE&FORMATS 
Project: urban intervention; closed circuit video installation. Artwork/s and artifacts: video and object installation.

 

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