2019
Performance
Marta is a girl with 3 siblings, she attends a music school, a puppet theater school, her role model is her cat, she claims that all people deserve to have a home, her favorite animal is a snake, her favorite story depicts a tiger that suffers in the wilderness after being released from the cage because he is not prepared for such conditions…
In the performance Imitating Marta, the audience had the opportunity to get to know Marta through conversation, the items she brought, and photos from her cellphone. In the meanwhile, the hairdresser cut Mrša’s hair, copying Marta’s hairstyle.
Body-trends for girls and women include the definition of the desired hairstyle and are celebrated by actresses, singers, and influencers. The long-lasting trend of long hair stays the dominant representation of a desirable woman in mass media and social networks. To opt for a different choice is turning away from this dominant imagery.
Open and sensible young girl Marta was selected as a role model, in the time when exclusively a rational and objective approach of science dominates the field of knowledge production. Emotionality, irrationality, and spontaneity are identified with immaturity, uneducated people, sports fans, and nationalists. Modernism has thrown out from the horizon what can not be explained, examined, what remains in the field of irrational, spontaneous, and intuitive, devaluing at the same time the world of children, animals, nature, indigenous people, rituals, movement, and imagination as sources of insights.
The haircut was part of the exhibition Open Nova, that reflected upon learning in spaces of contemporary art. The exhibition Open Nova took place in Gallery Nova (Zagreb, 2019) and was mentored by Ben Cain and Tina Gverović with the support of the curatorial collective WHW What, How & for Whom.
Photo credits: Davor Zupičić
