Mia Maraković, Pavle Pavlović & Rada Iva Sibila
Curated by Eve Woods
Opening night: 6-8 pm Thursday 21st November
with performance by Rada Iva Sibila
Exhibition walkthrough: Friday 22nd November
Gallery viewings: Friday 22nd & Saturday 23rd November 12-6 pm
Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present One must imagine Sisyphus happy, curated by Eve Woods.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy presents the work of Croatian artists Mia Maraković, Pavle Pavlović and Rada Iva Sibila and explores how individuals cope with a pervasive sense of impending doom while embracing ritual, absurdity and transformation.
The exhibition features a workspace and art book installation compiled from 10 years of compulsive collecting, layering and writing; a selection of absurdist trompe l'oeil featuring medieval woodcuts and soft candy emoticons within godly skies; alongside a gut wrenching soundscape installation and performance exploring bodily anxiety and possibilities of transmutation.
This exhibition is an outcome of an AFAR Curatorial Fellowship which placed Eve Woods in Zagreb for the month of January 2024 at the invitation of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists. The exhibition is funded by The Arts Council of Ireland, and the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media through the Croatian Association of Fine Artists.
Artists for Artists Residency Network (AFAR) is an EU co-funded project and residency program, aiming to improve the mobility of contemporary visual artists and curators in Romania, Germany, Croatia, and Austria. The project is led by the Romanian Association for Contemporary Art (ARAC) with its three consortium partners – Goethe Institute Network, Croatian Association of Fine Artists, and Künstlerhaus Vienna. The AFAR Network project is co-funded by the European Union.
Biographies
Mia Maraković (b. 1990, Zagreb) is an artist from Zagreb, Croatia. She graduated from the Department of Art Education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2018. She has held nineteen solo exhibitions, including Black, White and Red Line – Composition, Gallery Crta (2023, Zagreb, Croatia), Open Studio, Hafenkombinati (2022 and 2021, Leipzig, Germany), Blackness, Gallery Karas (2022, Zagreb), Black, White and Red Line, Gallery Josip Račić (2022, Zagreb), Lost in Time and Space, Zilik Gallery (2020, Karlovac, Croatia), Transparent Boundaries, VN Gallery (2018, Zagreb), and Forms in Formation, Lauba (2017, Zagreb).
She has also participated in around eighty group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad, such as Text as Object, DLUL Gallery (2024, Ljubljana, Slovenia), the 37th Youth Salon Pao sat u bunar, HDLU (2024, Zagreb, Croatia), Visita Interiora Terrae: Myth and Alchemy as Artistic Practice (2022, San Luis Potosi, Mexico), the 6th Painting Biennale, HDLU (2021, Zagreb), Memories 3/Other Side Project, NIV Art Centre (2018, New Delhi, India), and the 8th Student International Art Biennale – SIAB (2017, Skopje, North Macedonia).
She has led several projects, including Murals at the Ethnographic Museum, Ethnographic Museum and Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (2024), and I Can Do It – Art Workshops in the Prison System, Croatian Association of Visual Artists and the Association for Creative Social Work in Zagreb (2023-2024).
Since 2015, Mia has been actively conducting art workshops with marginalized groups. From 2019 to 2024, she collaborated with the Association for Creative Social Work, organizing art workshops with prisoners in the prison system.
In 2022, she led creative workshops at the 4th UPSET ART festival of art and inclusion for people with disabilities, organized by the Trešnjevka Cultural Centre. She also facilitated creative workshops as part of the Hiding Under the Clouds project, focusing on behaviour prevention for at-risk children and youth at the Prečko Community Centre.
In 2018, she conducted research for her thesis, The Therapeutic Aspect of Visual Expression in Children with Special Needs, at the Turopolje Correctional Facility. In 2015, she launched her project Life Under the Sun at the Leptir Day Centre for Children with Special Needs in Srebrenica, Bosnia.
She has been a member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists in Zagreb since 2016 and a member of the Croatian Freelance Artists Association since 2023.
mia-marakovic.com | mia_marakovic
Pavle Pavlović (1983, Belgrade) is a painter based in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb in 2010. In his paintings, Pavlović is interested in constructing a unique universe where he combines personal experiences and motivations with a diverse array of elements from the virtual world. His distinctive paintings are a collage of various influences, paying homage to meme heroes, online phenomena, virals, scenes from comic books, and his enduring inspiration from late Gothic and early Renaissance painting. He juxtaposes these influences with the digital language of gifs and the camp aesthetics of screensavers and stock photography, resulting in fresh and provocatively ironic detachment.
His recent exhibitions include the Biennale of Painting in Zagreb at the Meštrović Pavilion (2023), Trotoar Gallery in Zagreb (2023), Post-ordinary at Plan X Gallery in Milano, Italy (2023), Grand Tour at Caja Blanca UALSP in Mexico (2023), and the 9th Beijing International Art Biennale at the National Museum of China in Beijing (2022). His works have also been showcased at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (2018, 2012), the National Museum in Zadar (2018), the National Museum of Gdańsk (2016), the Essl Museum in Vienna (2013), Spinnerei in Leipzig (2013), Kunstlerhaus in Vienna (2011), and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (2009). Pavlović teaches at Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts and is a recipient of ESSL AWARD CEE, Vienna (2011), Vraneković Award at 33rd Youth Salon, Zagreb (2016).
His works are homed in collections such as the Albertina Modern Vienna and Erste Fragments Zagreb.
pavlepavlovic.com | pavle___pavlovic
Rada Iva Sibila (2002) Graduated from the School of Applied Art and Design for Photography 2021; Animation and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb 2024. She is currently pursuing a Masters at the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb.
In her art she primarily focuses on contemporary visual, performative, and intermedial practices, with an entry through feminist critique. She engages with altered mental states, providing deeper insights and experiences into various atypical aspects of the human psyche, as well as societal and medical sanctions on differences. The projects she works on explore the fascination with emotions, their variability, and social and physiological conditioning.The primary media in which she works are 3D animation, experimental sound design, and performative practices.
She has taken part in a number of workshops and exhibitions: Design as practice: creative approaches for social impact conducted by Janka Csernak and Ritza Szerencses as representatives of the innovative centre MOME; Gender Species Community under the mentorship of Neža Knez; Anthropomorphism / Animism led by Paula TončIć; Opera: Amphitryon which received the rector’s award under the leadership of Lava Paripović; Multitude of Landscapes (2022) / Ambient Sound (2023) summer school under the mentorship of Alen Novoselac, Tomislav Pletenac, and Ivan Mesek; Dubrava Burns under the mentorship of Mia Maraković; Alu Perspective 2023, group exhibition at the HDLU Zagreb; Building Musical Worlds in VR led by Gad Baruch Hinkis, No More I’m Sorry workshop led by Marlen Ban; Intimate Spaces of the Ordinary Collaboration with ethnographic museum, Faculty of Philosophy, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Studies of Design/Faculty of Architecture and Academy of Fine Arts; Patterns and Repetitions led by Jasen Vodenica.
Image Descriptions:
1. A digital image of a transparent liquid-like mirrored feline mask floats over a distorted pink and purple background with green stripes.
2. A weathered book sits on a backdrop of printed text. The book is open. The left page has a black handwritten script down the centre. The text is in Croatian and appears to repeat the same phrase. Printed text is bleeding through the page from the other side. On the right hand a dark picture is stuck in. It is the internal of a church from above lit by sunlight through the left columns with an ominous red glow from the distant end.
3. A landscape image layers a backdrop of medieval woodprint, a 1950's image of nuclear testing and 4 foil balloons of the letter G.R.A.S. in pink, blue, green and gold.