Pallas Projects - One must imagine Sisyphus happy

One must imagine Sisyphus happy

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

The end of the world is not coming…
The end of the world is here…
The end of the world is gone and we are in the aftermath…

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.

Between 66-70 CE the world was predicted to end due to a second coming triggered by a Jewish uprising in Judea; from 1346-1351 the black plague was interpreted as the beginning of the end. In 1504 worldwide hardship led Botticelli to believe he was living through the Tribulations; in 1624 astrologers predicted a deluge would end us all starting in London; in 1780 the sky turned so dark in New England they thought it would never get bright again; in 1890 Wovoka predicted the resurrection of the Paiute dead as Judgement Day; in 1999 there was Y2K; 2012 the Mayan calendar ending. Pyramidologists, mystics, UFO cultists, theologians, astrophysicists, magical organisations, technologists and Christopher Columbus have all predicted something based on their chosen methodology was a sure sign the end of the world was nigh.

While living through our own series of tribulations it seems an endless and futile task to merely exist. Nihilism permeates popular culture and planning for a no-future is memefied. In this theatre of why-bother the compulsion to collect, create, push through discomfort to find perfection or a new version of existence is a personal labor.

This 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 emojis within godly skies; alongside a gut wrenching soundscape installation and performance exploring bodily anxiety and possibilities of transmutation. Combined, the work is a reflection of the labour we choose as our task to survive this doomsday feeling. Embodied through their artistic practice, Mia, Pavle and Rada utilise humour, gathering, diary practice and radical vulnerability to respond to universal insecurity.

Mia’s installation brings the artists' home-workspace to the gallery. This blurring of personal and professional, private and public is reiterated in the content of her artist diaries, presented for perusal.She obsessively collects daily activities and materials. The amalgamation of these scraps and splashes into tracings of movement and time flattens the hierarchy of personal relationships and waste materials into a loop of experience, connectivity, use and reuse. Found and collected books, and gifted personal diaries are layered with world events, cultural criticism, personal photographs, notes to self, automatic writing and colour blocking.The open books and calendars invite you to leaf though the weight of this time and action. Other books are preserved as objects d’art within treasure chests as precious relics. This continuous practice of interrelation blurs staged presentation and domestic reality, creating an in-between state where the artists’ industry defines the narrative.

Pavle’s paintings are monumental jokes; a trick to the eye and intention by a skilled Jester. Saint Cupcake layers, repeats, and squashes sections of Albrecht Dürer’s The Adoration of the Lamb and the Hymn of the Chosen (1948) from the printed book Apocalypse with Pictures. Centre stage and flying within a paper theatre a glazed, sprinkled, cherry on top cupcake descends from the sky halo’d within rays of light, the audience below in awe at this sweet emoji treat.

Rada Iva Sibila (b. 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.

This exhibition is an outcome of an AFAR Curatorial Fellowship which placed curator 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.

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.

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.

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.