From The Abandoned to The Bird – Sanja Latinović’s microworlds as mirrors of the world’s condition

Sanja Latinovi, the artist who has been present at the art scene since the beginning of 2000s is almost always engaged in performance art; however, the said medium is free-flowing, and it frequently grows into sculpture, video work, or photography.In her works -which we can also attribute to her sculptural vocation -the artist creates new (non)spaces, with the emphasis on the relationship between fullness and emptiness and the individual themselves, i.e., herself at the centre.Her work could indeed be described with several key words -fullness, matter, decomposition, void.These four elements are being realized in different combinations: fullness sometimes contains another fullness -object, installation or liquid contain a body (for example Aquarium, 2008) or a body contains organic substance like food (The Abandoned, 2019) and sometimes it stands on its own -as a body, or as a post-performance object/ installation (Do Not Cross, 2016); matter balances between the object and the body, sometimes standing independently as a body, and as an object it is being realized only as a post-performance object/installation, never as a self-standing object within the exhibition space; decomposition is being manifested through matter such as food, sand or glass (Movements: White, 2012); and finally void which with its emptiness embodies all three material elements listed above, because the performances of Latinovi problematize the emptiness from different perspectives -be it a shaped void engraved into different kinds of materials (Do Not Cross, Obstacle or Threshold, 2022); be it formless void, just a movement enacted by a body which gets a momentary shape by usage of different tools, such as pencils or belts (Deflection, 2009, Until Death Do Us Apart, 2021); or be it void which was once a visible matter but then by decomposition or digesting, it magically disappeared from the physical world, extending its missing half further into boundless space, merging with it without any boundaries (Half of My Meal is an Artwork, 2023).By using different combinations of four key words, incorporating the performative body, objects/installations/props and various matter, Latinovi entangles the questions of human isolation, incommunicability and that of the position of the artist in the (art)world.Even if in various performances the artist positions her (nude) body into danger and emotional or physical pain, as her fellow pioneer performance artists Marina Abramovi or Valie Export do, she mostly relies on what she has -her own