Artist:  Leja Jurišić

Yesterday freedom was only one step away from extinction. Today we hold back, we keep silent, we wait. We wait for them to put their words into our mouths, they are building their new images of a plurality of votes out of us, only to re-pin them – onto themselves. We – are numb. We cling to the first branch, the lowest. New fixations on ourselves follow, aversions to ourselves. We do not kill ourselves aloud; we seek our nominal sense in silence, in darkness. The starting points for the installation Without Words are the poem by Jure Detela Birth as Criterion and Perfect Day, a performance by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. In her seven-hour performative installation, the dancer Leja Jurišić is a hanging body that has been forcibly deprived of subjectivation and is therefore fixed: “The most beautiful moments are the shortest; they appear just after the pain comes and just before the pain comes again. They are mine and I will not forsake them.”

The 32nd Biennial of Graphic Arts: Birth as Criterionong>

Headquarter of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia

16 June 2017

Performed by Leja Jurišić
Created by Leja Jurišić in collaboration with Petra Veber
Curator: Yasmín Martín Vodopivec
Production: Leja Jurišič, Pekinpah Association, International Centre of Graphic Arts
Support: Municipality of Ljubljana City, Ministry of Culture of the RS
Photos: Urška Boljkovac. MGLC Archive.