Installation, 2024
Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina
Cur. Sanja Kojić Mladenov, Miha Colner, Mladen Banjac




           

‘’Sometimes They Call Me a Chick" is a performance from which the homonymous installation by the artist Isidora Branković emerges. These two works complement each other, creating a dynamic counterbalance that, presented in various media, communicates different messages. In the original case, the performance, the artist's presence makes a crucial difference in the interpretation of the piece. She kills a fish, then prepares and serves it to selected members of the audience. In doing so, Branković clearly dissects and questions the position of elitism, both in art and in everyday life. On the other hand, the installation encompasses all the formal elements that can be seen in the performance; the table setting is the same, the luxury of cutlery and plates, along with the aquarium where live fish would normally be, seemingly should communicate identical content. However, through the absence of life, both in the presence of the artist and in the fact that live fish are replaced by canned sardines in the aquarium, it transforms "Sometimes They  Call Me a Chick" into a separate work that exists in direct correlation with the original prototype. As part of the installation, with an open approach where everyone can take sardines and help themselves in the art space, questions about quality arise, questioning what is actually served to the observer as democracy and whether one should be satisfied with it.

The text was written by curator Jovana Trifuljesko

Produced for the first time in the Kamena Kuća Culture Centar at the ‘’Interakcije’’ exhibition