Croatian artist Martina Grlić creates a seemingly simple scene of happy and happy memories (explained here before). Born in Zagreb and currently resides in Zagreb, Grlić explores the politics of memory and reimagines everyday objects associated with the female experience. Her paintings blend clear memory with surreal elements, prompting people to reflect on personal and cultural history. While everything seems harmless and familiar at the beginning, Gridge shows how people can get deeper into their memories and how the reliability of the stories we keep telling ourselves quickly fade away. “Sweet Pastoral” brings attention to the way we rely on certain narratives, not just for happiness, but for life – understanding the world, even ourselves. What happens when we start to question the hollowness of this fact. Faced with the deceptive nature of memory, Gridge’s paintings show that soft idyllic poetry is not reliable, revealing the cultural mechanism behind it:
“All the education I have received, everything I have received or everything I told myself, insisted that the work was by no means improvised: I should have a script, but I misplaced it. I should have heard the prompts, but no longer do it. I should have known the plot, but all I know is what I see: flash images in variable order, images with no “meaning” except for temporary arrangements, not movies, but editing room experiences. In my middle age of life, I wanted to still believe in the intelligible narrative and narrative comprehensibility, but knowing that every edit can change feelings, start to see this experience as an electronic experience rather than a moral experience.”
“Saccharine Idyll” is on display at the Trotoar Gallery until November 8.
