Dreams and reality seldom meet; hemmed in by
time and society’s conventions, we have to suffer
minor neuroses, repressed desires, life-changes,
rebirth, and a stream of “little” deaths.
All of these are loaded onto our most vulnerable
relationship – the love affair.
Women twist in the trap of “external” life – putting
off the day they can satisfy their secret, creative,
romantic and liberating spirits. They live by media
dictates; they live the “essential life” prescribed by
women’s magazines.
A superficial existence fixated on constant
“upgrading”, slavishly following the endless
contemporary obsession with youth and beauty.
Life sinks easily into the mediocre, linking arms with
“our” man at the centre of our lives, retreating from
our fears of rejection and isolation into compromise
and indulgence.
Identity is lost – thrown out by her owner like a
heap of old clothes, an uncollected coat at the dry
cleaners, dead flesh discarded on the butcher’s slab
or lying in a morgue.
Only emptiness and the void remain.
The only solution we may have is to take these
moments of intimacy, to make them material and
public, stripped bare and offered up for
consumption and identification. In this way, they
can be neutralised, and the smouldering stopped.
A common tale: attracted by the “safely distant”,
fantasising about the “dark face of beauty” –
everything we fear and turn away from – while all
the time living with the “attractive”, coming to know
it, and falling in love ……… with the familiar.
_________
One of the phenomena of contemporary art, in addition to the present pluralism of approaches and artistic styles, is the fact that a great number of artists materialise their views of the world through the prisms of their own individual egos.
One should bear in mind that the artistic process is subjective and analytical (here I am thinking of diaries, either photographic or written, in which the relationship between the individual and the universal is crystallised) and each artistic creation comprises a series of different connotations and layers of contemporaneity.
Sonja Vuk’s artistic method involves a search for solutions. She uses “a range of materials to explain the relationship between an object and its surrounding space in order to establish a suggestive and convincing sphere of mental space and a reflective context.”
For example, in one installation she brings together the opposing concepts of danger and a “steamy” atmosphere. In another work the opposition is contained in her male types the Cheat and the Businessman.
For many years Sonja Vuk’s interest has focused on the male-female relationship. This is particularly so in her constructed objects – a female rabbit in a sexy position looks seductive and desirable (ne bi li tu trebao biti naslov rada), a sadomasochistic face mask with mirrors instead of eyes illustrates the falseness, hidden insecurity and imperfection of relationships (Take me as I am), a wedding ring in the shape of an animal trap (Should I stay or should I go), a prisoner’s ball and chain featuring a Mickey Mouse illustration very precisely expresses the situation of staying in a relationship for “other reasons” (Do you love me?).
While women struggle against unrealistic expectations imposed by society, fashion magazines and films, men concentrate on power and ownership. Sonja Vuk handles the problem of the female in society both intensely and intelligently, balancing illusion and the drive for perfection in the roles of housewife, seductress and career woman.
She wants us to participate in the issues of surrender, obligation and acceptance required by these roles. They create a series of intimate psychological agonies for women that sometimes lead to the suppression of creativity and, therefore, of female identity.
The opposition ironic witty remark — provoked unpleasant feeling is skilfully used by the artist to emphasize the ephemeral nature of objects and, consequently, to create empathy. This is what adds spice to the whole story.
Iva Brezovecki-Bidjin
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Not without reason, one of the most famous torture devices, which induced a slow and painful death, had the shape of a woman’s body. The Iron Maiden of Nuremberg was a hollow metal cast of a woman with two faces: the one at the front had its mouth shut and looked self-pityingly into its own inner space; the second, at the back, had closed eyes and slightly opened lips, as if she wanted to whisper.
The Iron Maiden wore a golden necklace and, when closed, it was almost impossible to see the narrow slit between her naked breasts. When she spread her arms, the inside became visible. It was completely filled with spikes and was designed to cause unbearable pain from hundreds of sharp points, but not to kill.
According to existing records, the Iron Maiden was first used on the 14th of August 1515, when she embraced and punished a certain money forger – the man was not only pierced but also trapped inside a female body.
Initially, any description of this device sounds erotic, actually sadomasochistic, but this idea dissolves in death.
Most of the objects exhibited by Sonja Vuk are more or less derived from the sadomasochistic iconography of contemporary society, from institutions of power, imprisonment, repression, punishment and pain. The objects are made by transforming items which normally signify the desire for beauty, for sexual attraction, or even for the security of belonging to someone.
However, most contain hidden traps and imply some form of repression, or its possibility.
It is to be expected that, at first sight, the transformation of these objects will appear painful and shocking. But, their purpose is not seriously threatened, even symbolically, by increased physical danger. On the contrary, they offer an additional choice – they merge into the fashionable flirtation with sadomasochism, involving body ornamentation and even more extreme marks of identification with the “real thing”. As one of the art works asks: How far can we go?
However, Sonja Vuk manages to tackle woman’s issues through her work. It is interesting that she deals exclusively with intimate subjects related to particular situations and to her romantic experiences. For her, it is just like a ritual: the sewing or knitting of torture implements is like an attempt to combine the opposing roles of housewife and a demonic Freddy Kruger.
Do you remember the scenes at the beginning of the film, when a glove was being made and a sense of horror was building around apparently safe and pristine locations such as a house, a child’s bedroom, a doctor’s surgery and a school? Surprisingly, all of these places had entrances to a boiler room in the basement where nothing is as we think because we are dreaming when we think we are awake.
With Sonja Vuk’s work, the gallery visitor is put into the unpleasant situation of being an intruder accidentally peering into someone else’s wardrobe (i.e. cellar, boiler room in the basement, or subconscious). There are diagnostic labels and records of the time of death but no corpses, and the owner of the clothes and the artist are absent, being temporarily released from the weight of the trauma.
The Iron Maiden of Nuremberg was destroyed during allied bombing in 1944 but many of her relatives remain in numerous museums and collections throughout Catholic Europe. The method of punishment is clear: the Iron Maiden opens her arms wide, the spikes are visible, the blood is cleaned, and the victim’s body is hidden.
Marko Golub
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Sonja Vuk
Born 1966. Ludbreg, Croatia
Education: 1984. School of Applied Arts, Zagreb, Croatia
1995. Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb, Croatia
1996. Academie Voor Beeldende Vorming, Faculteit der Kunsten Hoger beroepsonderwijs, 3 dimensionale vormgeving, Academie Voor Beeldende Vorming, Faculteit der Kunsten, Tilburg, The Netherlands.Exhibits since 1988.
Contact:
sonja.vuk@kr.t-com.hr
