SIC MUNDUS

Sic Mundus unfolds throughout the Muzej–Museo Lapidarium as a journey around the promise of transformation, the possibility of life beyond death, and the mortal condition of the body.

On the roof of the museum, the illuminated word NEBO introduces the work. In Croatian, nebo means “sky”. Split in two, it becomes NE and BO: ne means “no”, and bo, in the local dialect, “I don't know”. The promise of heaven already contains its own doubt. Does it exist? No? Who knows? Perhaps nebo.

At the entrance stands a life-size white figure inspired by Sailor Moon, bearing the artist's face. Sailor Moon is among the most powerful idols of Japanese popular culture: she destroys and regenerates, dies and returns, transforming her body and identity again and again.

In the animated transformation sequences, rotation is fast and spectacular, surrounded by light, stars and luminous trails. This figure turns slowly: it takes her a full minute to complete a single rotation around her own axis. She has a human face, and she does not transform into anything else. The material she is made of is destined to crack, deteriorate and, perhaps one day, break apart.

At random intervals, and each time in a different place in the museum, a choir sings Moja mala nema mane, nitko nema tako lijepe Dragane (“My girl has no flaws, no one has a Dragana as beautiful as mine”). The song becomes a eulogy: as with the dead, its subject is celebrated, idealised, given virtues she may never have had. The voices build an image meant to outlive the body, while the figure keeps turning, bound to its material.

In the early Christian baptistery, a metal cast of the artist's nose hangs above a mirror. In Genesis, God forms the human being from the dust of the earth and breathes the breath of life into his nostrils. Here the breath of a new birth meets a reflection: looking down, visitors find the nose, and themselves. Directly above, on the roof, stands NEBO.

The artist is present three times: her face on the idol, her name in the song, her nose above the font. Fragments of a body and an identity, displayed like relics. In the last room, she is no longer there.

The final room leaves transformation and immortality behind and returns to something ordinary: waiting. The sound of an idling bus can be heard. Its doors open and close, yet it never departs. Behind the altar, turn signals flash with the rhythm of a bus that is stationary but still in service. In the space stands a sculpture reminiscent of a bus shelter bench, its seats missing. There is nowhere to wait. Whether it is seen as a sculpture or as a shelter depends on where attention goes: towards what is supposed to arrive, or towards what is already there.

And meanwhile, life is already happening.