Animals and nature are frequent motifs in Živko Marušič’s figurative artistic language. Wheat fields, birds, rabbits, roses, and other flora and fauna appear alongside human figures in unrecognizable landscapes, often depicted in a highly subjective and even intimate manner.
Conversation with Birds is an example of just such a juxtaposition of humans and nature. The canvas features two smiling human figures in a wheat field and three birds stretching their necks and seemingly twittering. The relationship between the humans and nonhumans in Marušič’s painting is neither hierarchical nor exploitative; on the contrary, the brushwork and the absence of a clear boundary between the figures and the background indicate visual continuity between the three agents in the picture – human, animal, and landscape. This harmony presents an idealized image, obscuring the real tensions and conflicts characteristic of the contemporary relationship between humans and nature.
Marušič’s painting offers a possible view of an alternative visual imaginary, no longer anthropocentric, but positing humans as an equal element in the ecosystem. While the artist did not refer to posthumanist theory, it can serve as an interpretive framework that, through a critique of the central role of humankind, expands the understanding of the ecosystem as the sphere of equality and interdependence – like in Conversation with Birds.
