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Josip Šurlin, Pelvis, 2023

installation, 2 pieces; steel, carpet, rubber granulate, 7 x 140 x 210 cm, (each piece)

photographs: Žaklina Antonijević

The work named Pelvis is a two-part installation consisting of two metal frames placed on carpet fragments. Using rubber granulate, inside the frames, the author sculpts relief forms of the human pelvic bone according to illustrations taken from an anatomical atlas. One frame contains a frontal view of the same bone, while the other one a back view.   

 

The pelvic bone (lat. pelvis) transfers body weight onto lower limbs, thereby enabling movement, and protecting organs located in the below-stomach region. In the context of this work, the mentioned bone is taken as a symbol of human work, needs, endurance, and strength. As a key movement factor and a bond between two body halves, the pelvic bone directly affects the human need for leaving a trace – both through history and today, in times where our motions are more dependent on socio-political paradigms. The work Pelvis is, in fact, by itself a trace, precisely because of how its visual is built (from both views and in both frames); the sediment of raw technical rubber is piled up inside the installation sections creating a deep relief – like an archeological excavation. Furthermore, the relief images enter space because of the heaps they are built from so we may also perceive them as picture-objects resembling “sums of mounds”. Departing from human proportions to human actions, the author emphasizes the pelvic bone’s importance understanding its propellent nature in a twofold way: as a constitutive identity part or personal signature apparent in movement, and as a reactionary metaphor of the individual's transition to marginal, liminal spaces of society, or perhaps, the force of an entire collective in pursuit of some larger changes.    

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