I think it’s both personal and collective. But I prefer focusing on the collective because it's a more interesting approach. There’s something happening in our culture: a disembodiment, where we're increasingly existing outside of our bodies, projecting ourselves through images, screens, and social media. Even now, talking on Zoom, I’m more aware of my image than of my physical self. This detachment creates a void, and language fills that void. Originally, language was a tool for expressing ourselves, but as we lose touch with ourselves, we start expressing through borrowed words, what we’ve read or heard, rather than what we truly feel or think. This obsession with language, I believe, comes from a longing, a sense of loss, like how people are obsessively playing Wordle. It’s like we’ve lost something essential in our ability to communicate, and this loss fuels the obsession.
For a long time, my work engaged deeply with social media and online language. I was obsessed with it, consumed by it, and then regurgitated it through my art. Marshall McLuhan once said that artists are the first alarm bells. But nowadays, instead of heeding the alarm, we’re just admiring the bell, how pretty it is. This reflects a broader issue in the art world. Right now, I’m reassessing my practice, trying to understand what has emerged from it and why. It’s important for artists to reflect on what they’re expressing and what’s beneath that expression. I’m exploring these ideas in my latest work for the Stedelijk, questioning the underlying obsession with language and what it reveals about our current moment. It’s a challenging but exciting process.
It’s interesting because I've had some transformative experiences over the past year and a half that have shifted my practice. While I still collect language, it’s now more my own—words that come to me in dreams or while walking. I’m moving away from online sources and toward something more poetic. It feels like I’ve found my own words, and once you understand the root of an obsession, it starts to let go.
I think it’s connected to this embodiment I keep coming back to. Through my performances, especially with my voice, I've been delving into the body and what it holds. Our fixations often stem from what we’re holding inside, and once those internal fixations are released, the external obsessions fade. I had this dream of disembodied heads talking while their bodies were submerged underwater with piranhas—a metaphor for the unconscious. It made me think of how we cover our bodies, our unconscious, with societal constructs, and this disconnect is something I’m exploring in my work.
That’s a really good question. It’s something I’ve been reflecting on a lot. There's this idea that your mother tongue is more emotional, but for me, English has become intertwined with my emotional world. I dream in English, I think in English. It’s even the language I use to talk to my dogs in a tender way. So, emotionally, English has become quite significant.
What’s interesting is that I’ve almost reparented myself in English. It’s like I’ve built this whole new self around the language. But then, of course, the question is, what is that self? Is it just another version of me, or the real me? I don’t have the answer to that, but English has come to feel more like "my" language over time, which is odd.
There’s also a freedom in using a language that’s not your mother tongue. Some things I express in English wouldn’t even occur to a native speaker. There's this sense of being unbound by the cultural baggage that comes with being a native speaker. I definitely feel a kind of creative liberation in that.
Yes! Actually, in my recent work, particularly in Vienna and at the Stedelijk, I’ve been delving into pre-verbal language, what the body communicates before words. I’m really curious about how much we communicate beyond language, through our bodies, tone, energy. I think that’s the real mother tongue. It’s not English or Croatian; it’s this deep, primal, non-verbal communication.
It’s funny because my process is shifting a lot now. I’ve been thinking deeply about bodily, physical expression—whether different body parts can “speak” in their own way. I’ve become fascinated with the idea that your knee or your thumb might have something to say. How can we integrate the body into a holistic expression, where it’s not just the head or voice communicating?
It’s almost the opposite of what I used to focus on in my work. Now, I’m exploring how to express these deeper, bodily insights that have nothing to do with words. And I think that’s what’s interesting for artists—to use your own practice to transform itself, almost fight against it in a way, and evolve.
Oh, absolutely! I was an only child and spent a lot of time alone, so I created performances for myself. I’d record things on cassette tapes, talk, sing, and entertain myself with my voice. I danced a lot in front of mirrors too. Looking back, it was a way of playing with identity and expression, even before I really knew what I was doing.
That’s what I’m trying to tap into now with my recent work—regressing to those pre-verbal states, connecting with the "baby me" that was performing even then. I’m convinced that these deep, unconscious drives were present when I was two or three years old, and my performances today are rooted in that early instinct.
Yes, it’s massive! I came up with the idea while working with voice frame therapy, which is all about using your voice to connect to different parts of your body. I was thinking a lot about how I wanted to scream at my phone, at my devices, and how the voice can literally create space for you by asserting boundaries; saying “no” or “yes” or just releasing frustration.
The mural has this giant “ah”—it’s an image of expression. But as we were creating it, I started to think about how, in a way, it’s also repressive. It’s an image of something being expressed, but it’s not the actual expression. There’s a tension between the image and the reality of the act, like we’re enacting these performances of expression in our daily lives without truly expressing ourselves. It’s this kind of Marshall McLuhan moment, where we’re consuming images of emotions, but not actually feeling or doing them.
Red is survival for me—it’s primal. It’s that deep, visceral “what the fuck is happening” feeling. We live in these organised, modern worlds where all our needs are met, yet underneath, there’s still this sense of survival. The exclamation marks, the red, they’re all part of that. They signal something urgent, something that’s been flattened down or repressed, but is still trying to break through.
Exactly. That’s the tension I’m exploring—between the desire to scream and the fact that it’s contained in an image. It’s repressed, but also expressive. It’s complicated, but I think that’s where the power lies.
My favourite part is that through my work, I’ve found myself. I think that’s why people become artists—it’s a life or death thing, this deep need to express something. My work has saved me in many ways, and that’s something I’m incredibly grateful for.
As for the least favourite part, I think every practice has moments you don’t love, but they’re all part of the journey. The key is to do more of what you love and less of what you don’t, but even the parts you dislike are feeding into something. It’s all connected.
I think it’s about the difference between consuming language and using it as a tool. We’re surrounded by words that we perform without truly understanding or embodying them—words like “safe,” “inclusive,” or “consent.” We say these things, but often don’t fully grasp their layers of meaning.
The depth of understanding comes from the body, from truly feeling these things, not just consuming them. That’s the core of my work—how do we take language back and start using it consciously, instead of letting it consume us?
