‘My beautiful head’, 2017
Material: velvet, polystyrene, chain, clamps with rubber, pins
The idea of wholeness and integrity retreated in front of the world fragmentation. The price of this was also paid by the body, stucked in a rift between nature and society. In this artwork, the separation of the head from the body is further emphasized by its transposition into the pendant-appendix, its periphery. The body, in particular a female body, is in continuous state of coercion to fit into a certain scheme of social expectations, primarily those concerning his appearance and beauty. Living this fragmentation, we forget that we were once the whole, but the desire remains, and the need to identify those layers of our being that are not socially constructed. Who says my head is beautiful?
Olivera Parlic was born in 1971 in Belgrade, Serbia.
1997 – Graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts (Belgrade), Department of Sculpture
2000 – MA degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts (Belgrade)
Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts (Belgrade), Department of Sculpture. Since 2010 participates in the activities of the independent art association Third Belgrade.
2014 – DA (Doctor of Arts) degree at Faculty of Fine Arts (Belgrade).
Lives and works in Belgrade.
Empathy for things?
The relationship of man and the object is never a one-way: we make things according to our needs, but also objects that we create in a certain way shape us. They have strange distinction to absorb characteristics, intentions and aspirations of its creators but also from those who use them. Objects can tell many stories about the body, the body that is expelled. His place was taken by the images and objects, various gadgets, extensions, prostheses, replacements. Objects that I create preserve memories of their background and loss of function, but they are also human body condition, the testimony of a fragile existence.
Olivera Parlić