On Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at 8 PM at Booksa, join us for the launch of Gloria Lizde’s artistic research booklet I Swallowed My Dream, created in collaboration with the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, followed by a lecture by Dr. Nataša Polgar.
The artistic research booklet I Swallowed My Dream reinterprets archival materials uncovered while exploring the history of representations of hysteria (from the Greek ὑστέρα, meaning womb) — a psychiatric disorder once believed to be caused by a wandering, restless uterus, which gained widespread attention in the late 19th century. Through her research into photographic archives from psychiatric institutions, Gloria Lizde weaves together fragments of photographs, books, and illustrations, reshaping the visual history of female madness and the portrayal of the female body at the crossroads of reality and fiction, documentation and staging.
As part of the booklet launch, Gloria Lizde will give a short talk about her working process, joined by Petar Vranjković, the booklet’s co-editor and graphic designer, who will discuss the design approach. The evening will also feature the lecture Does Madness Have a Gender? Femina narrans in Stenjevec by Dr. Nataša Polgar from the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, whose academic work explores related themes, including studies of witch trial records and medical files from Croatia’s first psychiatric institution, the Stenjevec Asylum.
The booklet will be available for free at Booksa on May 6, 2025, and afterward at GMK (Pavla Šubića Street 29).
Does Madness Have a Gender? Femina narrans in Stenjevec
In my presentation, I will reflect on what is described in the announcement as Gloria Lizde’s “booklet,” but which is, in fact, one of the impressive outcomes of her work — a project that fuses an artistic concept with a drive not only to visually recreate but also to critically interrogate the constructions of “female” madness. Her technically impeccable black-and-white photographs function simultaneously as personal and collective (self-)portraits, underpinned by extraordinarily thorough scholarly research that encompasses archival materials, scientific studies, and a rich array of visual references directly or indirectly tied to representations of the female body and “mental” illness.
The exhibition and the accompanying booklet provide an occasion to reflect on my own research into archival materials from the Royal State Asylum for the Insane “Stenjevec” — today’s Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital — focusing on the period from its founding in 1879 through the early decades of the 20th century. These records reveal the reasons behind the hospitalization of women (compared to male patients), the gendered distribution of diagnoses, the status of female patients within psychiatric discourse, and, in fragments, the voices and life stories of the women themselves.
These voices, captured within the medical files, open a series of questions: who has the right to narrate, to possess a voice within psychiatric discourse, and thus claim subjectivity? Does a language of madness truly exist? Are mental illnesses social constructs or social products? And what role does gender play in shaping these narratives?
(Dr. Nataša Polgar)
Gloria Lizde (b. 1991, Split) earned her BA in Film and Video from the Arts Academy in Split and her MA in Photography from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. Her photographic work explores themes of family relations, heritage, and memory, using both documentary and staged photography. She has held several solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows in Croatia and internationally, including the O21 OSTRALE Biennale, She Who Starts the Song (17th Gjon Mili International Exhibition of Photography and Moving Image), Familiar Fantoms (Residency Unlimited, New York), Of This World – Envisioning Alternative Cartographies (Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center), Being/Seeing (QUAD Gallery), Athens Photo Festival(Benaki Museum), In-between (The Bridge and Tunnel Gallery, New York), The Illuminated Room – Women’s Photographic Practices in Croatia, the 57th Zagreb Salon, among others. Her works are included in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan. Lizde was nominated for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2020 and was selected for the international emerging artists program Parallel – European Photo Based Platform in 2018 and 2021. She received the Dr. Éva Kahán Foundation Scholarship and Residency in 2022 and was awarded the Radoslav Putar Award the same year, recognizing her as the best young visual artist in Croatia.
Nataša Polgar is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb. She graduated in Comparative Literature and French Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, where she also earned her PhD. Before joining the Institute, she worked for Zarez, a biweekly magazine for social and cultural issues, and as an editor at Golden Marketing, overseeing numerous publications in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Her research interests range from hagiography as an (auto)biographical genre to “marginal genres” such as narratives from witch trial records and medical files from the Stenjevec psychiatric institution. She is particularly interested in cultural constructions and representations of madness and the monstrous, as well as the narrative coding of “difficult” emotions like fear and anxiety, and their reflections across various genres of oral and written literature. She publishes regularly in Croatian and international journals and, in 2021, published her book The Witch on the Couch: Psychoanalytic Essays on Witch Trials in Croatia.
Petar Vranjković (b. 1997) is a transmedia artist and researcher whose work incorporates objects from various archives alongside photography, video, graphic art, and design. He holds a Master’s degree from the Department of Animated Film and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Vranjković is particularly interested in the shaping of memory and storytelling through artistic narratives. A central theme of his work is the intimate history of the individual, always interpreted through the heritage, traditions, and culture of a specific community within a given time and place. He lives and works between Zagreb and Barcelona.
Program Curators: Antonela Solenički and Petar Vranjković
Editors: Gloria Lizde and Petar Vranjković
Dramaturge: Tea Matanović
Production: Generator of Multidisciplinary Co-productions (GMK)
The publication launch is organized in collaboration with the literary club Booksa. The program is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the City of Zagreb. GMK’s activities are supported by the Kultura nova Foundation and INA d.d.
