Im Rahmen des Galerienrundumgangs eröffnete die junge slowenische Künstlerin und Schriftstellerin Eva Petrič, die bereits seit mehreren Jahren in Wien lebt und arbeitet, am 24. Mai ihre Ausstellung Missing Lullaby in den Räumlichkeiten der Lukas Feichtner Galerie Wien. Im folgenden Statement beschreibt Eva Petrič die Intention und Hintergründe ihrer Kunst mit eigenen Worten:
Concept – Statement:Concept – Statement:
Blanco Castilla Marta Susana, Campero juan Carlos, Delgada Margarita, Escalda Jose Maria, Fernandez Gonzalez Juan Alejandro, Garcia Conti Jesus Jose, Hernandez Rodriguez Jorge, Ibalo Antonio Alberto. What can we do with the names of those missing? Forget them? Cut them out? Tear them? Erase them? Engrave them? Underline them? Replicate them? Sell them? Exchange them? Deny them? Cover them? Steal them? Burry them? Save them? Share them.
Missing Lullaby is an object of research, of reflection echoing all those who have been robbed of their bodies for political reasons and all those who have been robbed of their voices. Inspired by the recently established memorial wall in Parque de Memoria in Buenos Aires, where the 30.000 names of the missing people have apperared only recently after having been denied their existence for over thirty years, it chooses to focus specifically on the bodies and voices robbed during the so called „dirty war“ that took place in Argentina between the years 1976-1983. Missing Lullaby is the auditory reflection of this wall. Its materialization into sound with focus on human voice is the reaction to the fact that not only the voices of the victims but also of other people were silenced for decades and still continue to be in other situations in other parts of the world.
By materializing the wall through sound, the Missing Lullaby returns voices to the actual names of the victims, returns their presence – creates a space for them, brings them into the space of the gallery. Voice is presence and this presence we need to share, is the main intention of the Missing Lullaby. For this purpose a full scoped and multilayered environment is created with thoughtful addition of other sounds, making the Missing Lullaby to act as a catalyst for emotions set forth in listeners. Thus this sound interpretation of the memorial wall audio-ports the Parque de Memoria Wall from the visual material environment enabled by the three channel video installation On the other side of the telephone book also into that of a complex emotional environment, with emotions piling into a hematoma and finally bursting out from under the skin in the hema-toma installation.
My skin, the skin of a box without skin, floating* … 32 collars, six generations, 172 napkins, 12 pillows, 25 souvenirs, thousands of hours, miles of thread, traces of names, memories, voices, smells, sounds, emotions…
My skin, your skin is so much more then just the membrane separating me from you. Its lines connect, intersect, dissect… – you never know how, with what with whom you are connected – … We are existing in a tightly interrelated network of many voices and bodies – multidimensional multifunctional with our ability to remember and imagine, going beyond linear space and time. My skin, your skin is trans-generational, containing not only veins of hope, happiness, love, softness of its touch… but also of disappointments, grieving, dread, agony, anger… exploding where they should not, resulting in hema-toma…
By definition, a hematoma is a collection of blood outside of a blood vessel. It occurs because the wall of a blood vessel has been damaged and blood has leaked into tissues where it does not belong…
…like my hema-toma. We can have hema-toma on our body – our skin, but also WE can ourselves be hema-toma, not by blood causing them but instead when emotional barriers break and emotions explode …be this in a person or in a society, in a group or alone …be this in Birmingham, London, New York or Berlin last year, or Tunis, Cairo, Sana, Bahrain, Bengazi, Homs, Tripoli and other places with pressure still expanding their hema-toma…
Through my hema-toma hungry fescoes appear, disappear and then again reappear in the unique rhythm set forth by Missing Lullaby, calling to all those who are – or that are no longer – here in body… questioning not only what we see and what is looking at us, but also all that is sounded for us. All that spreads, sedates, meditates, hesitates underneath our skin and was thought of as non-existent now pulls at our attention, like a muse, biting hard and holding its grip loyally on us till we give into and acknowledge it. It is like a Hema-toma, growing, spreading, aching, swelling, until we cut it and drain it – offer our attention to it, the potential to reverse the whole process.