NIKOLETA RADIŠIĆ

House of Mirror

Fine Arts and Design

House of Mirror is a multi-layered installation consisting of various media presented in a scenographic presentation. What is the meaning of its individual elements and their role in the whole?
The new work combines two older projects with a new one. I merged them into one installation because I felt that each decision is tied to a previous one. It is personal, but it’s also about my world views. I make fun of over- production by doing the most I possibly can and then I make fun of myself for taking things so seriously. The installation is a mindscape. The shelves serve as bedside tables or tables for refreshments. Me and Mirror the robot will do our best to accommodate each guest, even if it ruins our marketing facade. The installation contains older pieces and videos as well as pieces that I personally tie to the process or inspiration.

It seems to me that the irrational is important for you. The individual elements are emerging from the dark. Does it represent the subconscious?
It’s easiest to explain this through my drawings. I portray emotions through colours, different textures and the amount of pressure exerted while drawing. Drawings on white paper represent conscious, socially filtered expressions of emotions, while the ones on black paper represent the subconscious, emotions ‘running wild’. In the installation, the contrast of black and white merely represents how dramatic emotions can feel when one is lost in their own thoughts. As for the irrational: there definitely needs to be a certain reliance on psychology – in my case psychoanalytic therapy. It’s not that I aim to show irrationality, but I use contrasts to reveal something I believe to be “real” through known or personal symbolism. I basically play with the idea that an emotional approach is just as valid as a rational one. It’s just different parts of the same brain. Both insufficient without the other.

What is your creative process? Do you start with a drawing? Or writing? How do the different media and topics add up?
Writing is definitely my main starting point. I use writing as an insight into what I want to do. To create the character of the fictional robot Mirror, I wrote different texts to figure it out: a poetic one, a fictional narrative, a monologue from different perspectives. Drawing similarly helps me to figure out what I want to say visually. It can visualize emotions or add symbolic meanings to things. Drawing is also a mental exercise prior to figuring out what I want to do. It allows me to see the bigger picture and then I can decide whether to add a new media or do something differently. Every media is just a new area to explore within the existing system. The ideas basically come from my own needs, emotional states and attitudes, which I then convey to the world through my artistic practice.

photo: Polina Davydenko