Happy birthday
12 photographs, 2013

It is a common occurrence during celebrations in our culture to slaughter and cook an animal and widely considered that “If you do not kill pig or lamb, you have not celebrated anything.”

 

‘Happy Birthday was taken on the artist’s tenth birthday, but to the viewer who does not have this information the photographs simply show the twelve steps of the process of slaughtering and roasting a pig; and Mila is seen in the background in only one of the photographs. The personal evocation and recapitulation of how the artist’s family celebrated her birthdays is equally an anthropological comment on the local people’s tradition and customs and the stagnation of mentality and habits, and points out the existential reality of a society obsessed with the (im)possibility to subsist itself. Žana Vukičević, curator of MSURS

Exhibition view, Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska, BiH