Photo: Marcandrea
Gallery performance, Olja Grubić
Sunday, 29 January 2023 at 4 p.m. | Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, +MSUM
Based on research into the close relationship between the logic of civilization and the environment, the performance looks into the disproportionate impact of ecological degradation on women, with a special focus on environmental and gender injustice.
According to Timothy Morton, one of the main stumbling blocks in environmental thinking is the image and concept of nature itself, which over the centuries has helped the human mental sphere to develop an illusion of opposition and detachment between the biosphere and civilization. Admiring nature from a distance causes a similar paradoxical mental confusion as the one that patriarchy perpetuates concerning women, raising them on the pedestal of sadistic admiration, while simultaneously subjecting and destroying them.
For decades, the feminist movement has been trying to liberate women from this connection with nature, which has been exploited by the patriarchal idea of women being confined to the domestic sphere and excluded from political participation. The central premise of the project is that there is an analogy between the exploitation of women and that of nature: the lack of respect for them and the place they are assigned, rendering their work, their production, and so on, invisible.
Fertile Soil is the first part of a four-year project under the common title EXTIMA. In it, Olja Grubić explores the externalization of the intimate as a basic gesture of the artist on the one hand, while on the other hand, she opens up the complex relationship between private and public, personal and social.
The performance is a part of Hotspot 2023
Author and performer: Olja Grubić
Coauthors and performers: Lana Zdravković, Kristina Aleksova Zavašnik, Barbara Kukovec, Nohemi Barriuso
Music: Andrej Fon, Vid Drašler
Producer: Špela Trošt
Public relations: Sara Horžen
Production: Via Negativa
Financial support: Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia and City of Ljubljana
