JOIE DE VIVREThe mythical drama of human existence tends to be reduced to a pursuit forpleasure and happiness. Yet, living most often implies a certain level of sufferingand melancholy, the absence of happiness, contemplation and search formeaning in activities that evoke a desired mood.In her art, Ksenija Turčić explores the meaning of life in an indirect way,questioning her own intimacy and physicality, her social interactions, space,the relationship between public and private, her past...The installation Joie de vivre goes along these very lines. It consists of aseries of photographs of an unknown origin, found at a dump, on which theartist intervenes by covering the figures of the portrayed persons with whitepaint, thus creating ghostly blanks in places formerly occupied by smiling,embraced girls, couples in love, groups and individuals.Roland Barthes says that a photograph does not call up the past (nothingProustian in a photograph). The effect it produces upon him is not to restorewhat has been abolished (by time, by distance) but to attest that what I see hasindeed existed.With this procedure of washing out the characters in the photographs,Ksenija Turčić has no intention of denying the existence of unknown persons n the photos. On the contrary, photography is a medium that attests theirexistence in the past, but a past that is not ours, emphasizes the artist. Shepaints over the characters in order to protect them from view and thus preservetheir intimacy and integrity of life’s moments.Happiness, pleasure, sadness... will remain hidden behind the shield of thewhite coating. These are indications of another time, but they are also vibrationsof the resonance chamber of the human mind, of doubts and expectations,inscribed in today’s almost forgotten, analog photographic medium.As a counterpoint to this work, which occupies an entire wall with randomlyarranged photographs, in no particular order, stand two black albums.Catch the eye.Scrolling through the albums, we discover photos that belonged to Ksenija’sparents, and in them are people she does not know – and if she has met themby any chance, today she does not recognize them and doesn’t rememberthem. Since her parents are no longer here, the artist takes the photographsof people who used to fill their family albums, rearranges them and interveneson them using white paint. The photos are almost completely covered, only aneye remains visible. The same is in every photo in the album.As the title of the work suggests, catching someone’s eye is literally the onlything we can do.Although the motif of the eye, as well as the piercing gaze, is known to usfrom the earlier works of Ksenija Turčić, here the artist associates it with aninteresting phenomenon from the end of the 18th century. It is a type of jewelry,a medallion, the so-called Lover’s Eye, depicting the eye of a particularperson painted on an ivory plate that was given to a lover. The mysteriouseye, whose identity will remain unknown to those for whom it is not meant,is always watching.The more I look, the more I see, a poet would write.— Helena Puhara