Jana Dabac: Freedom from and freedom to

April 22nd – May 17th 2024

 

Freedom – even though we all roughly know what freedom should be, the term is difficult to define. Thus, the common conception of freedom is often termed a mere subjective illusion. Even if we are unable to define what it is, we will easily agree on its opposite – a limitation or force that hinders actions or being.

 

“I shared my view of freedom with that thin red thread.

And it saddened me that the only thing that shared

my view of freedom wasn’t actually

free – it was tied to the terrace fence.”

Jana Dabac

 

Despite the fact that much has been written about the role of art in society, the reasons for its creation, and the ways we recognise it, there are no answers – or more precisely, there is no definitive answer. Depending on the time and place, we read and interpret certain aspects differently, always and again connecting art with our own life and our current moment, identifying the specific and the universal. And the universal transcends our limitations – temporal and geographical coordinates, cultural differences and visual codes.

I have always considered artists to be a special kind of interpreters, code breakers, the ones who turn individual experiences into universal messages. Photographers (and artists who employ photography) are especially interesting – using a medium that cuts through the reality we live in by means of technical (and technological) procedure, deconstructing it in order to create something new, something we have not seen or grasped before.

John Berger wrote that photography is a making aware of the process of self-conscious observation, which occurs after a photograph has already been taken. Optically unconscious, invisible, that becomes something seen for the first time through an interplay of time (rather than form).

Petar and Jana Dabac are father and daughter. Despite their familial ties, their artistic paths diverge considerably and, in keeping with temporal and societal circumstances, their work stems from somewhat different positions. However, the works exhibited at the Spot Gallery clearly address the notion of freedom.

When she returned from an artist residency in Krems in 2018, Jana’s impressions and stories referred to the ease of creation and the freedom she experienced – the opportunity to only work on her art (such an unusual occurrence for all of us working in culture) resulted in tireless exploration and creation. I am not sure what the chronology of their conception is, however, the two works displayed at the Spot Gallery – The Red String and Intimate Distance – were created precisely in Krems. The works of Petar Dabac exhibited at the gallery were created over a long period of time. The cult piece Virus was produced in 1972 and is part of the experiments with the photographic medium that Dabac was undertaking at the time, while the work The End of Film was created during the noughties, as the author was transitioning from analogue to the digital medium.

Although they are temporally and generationally distant, we still recognise the dialogue taking place between these works.

With the piece Virus, Petar Dabac deconstructs the photographic image, breaking open the canon, and, by means of play, opens up a space of freedom of artistic creation that had not been conquered until that point – different in procedure, but not in terms of intention compared to Jana Dabac’ piece Intimate Distance. Petar Dabac slices a female portrait, creating a raster image, a children’s toy, in which the elements are not exactly in their “right” place. Jana Dabac’ work, on the other hand, addresses the symbolic conquest of space for the sake of attaining freedom of creation. Using the camera, she records her relationship to the new space in which she finds herself, capturing a series of shadows and angles. The selected shots are then arranged in a raster image, producing an abstract scene. Both works thus at first glance prompt wonder and confuse the viewer, forcing them to really observe.

In contrast to this black-and-white coupling, The Red String and The End of Film are visually starkly different and, in relation to the positive understanding of the concept of freedom (freedom to) in the previous works, they address freedom from. In the end, through Jana Dabac’ work, the red string gets physically freed, tied to a balloon and flying off to freedom (a piece of blue skies). That ordinary piece of thread and the blue sky thus become a powerful metaphor for the unknown, the terrifying possibility of breaking with a known situation, the ties that hold us back. I don’t know whether the development of digital technology and the advent of digital cameras – which instead of using analogue films limited to 24 or 36 shots, record the shots on memory cards, storing them in the form of ones and zeroes – was is in equally parts terrifying and exciting. Petar Dabac records this transition, the liberation from the analogue, by “saving” the end of film. The physical remnant, which usually ended up in a trash bin, suddenly becomes the main motif – rescued, digitised and printed out using a digital ink jet printer.

Negative freedom as a concept represents the absence of obstacles and barriers that prevent us from acting, while positively understood freedom is the possibility of acting and taking control in a way that pushes the boundaries and allows the realisation of the meaning of one’s existence. What the works of Jana and Petar Dabac so viscerally speak about is that, although we are not born free, with time we may become freer, with time we might reach the possibility of self-determination and harmony.

Lana Lovrenčić

Jana Dabac (Zagreb, 1978) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in 2004 with a project for the Museum of Photography in Zagreb. During her studies, she participated in the international architectural competition The Harbourpolis Hamburg, in which her team won first prize and she received the Rector’s Award for the same project in 2004. Since her student days, she collaborated with various architectural offices as a designer, and in 2007 founded her own architecture and design office DiaPozitiva.

In addition to architecture, she was also involved in design and photography. In 2011, together with Jurana Hraste, she held the first solo photographic exhibition Frame Obsession at the &TD Student Centre Gallery in Zagreb. She spent time at an artist residency in Krems, Austria (2018), and the piece Intimate Distance, created during that stay, was shown in the exhibition of the 12th HT Award for Contemporary Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. The interactive sound object Echoes of Space, created during her artist residency at Siva zona in Korčula (2020), was exhibited at the Korčula City Museum. She exhibited individually and collectively in Zagreb and Stari Grad on the island of Hvar.

 

The exhibition is supported by Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb, and Kultura Nova Foundation.