Inherent Beauty

New installation commissioned by Public Room Promo Center, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, 2010

Caul Fat (pig stomach), mdf tiles 2 sections of 350 cm x 315 cm
full installation 656 cm x 315 cm x 300 cm

Our skin reflects our age and our ancestry, our state of health and our cultural identity; it communicates much of what the world knows about us. Skin is visually perceived to provide involuntary insights into hidden things. It is a multilayered, multipurpose organ that shifts from thick to thin, tight to loose, wet to dry, across the landscape of the body. Lacking definitive boundaries, skin flows continuously from the exposed surfaces of the body to its hidden cavities and organs.

“Inherent Beauty pleads towards a specific visual beauty whose essence is creation of something beautiful through ugliness, if we may so crudely determine this discourse. It is a new geography of art both literally and by implication. The objective roughness, bluntness and ugliness of the medium that Hadzi-Vasileva uses (e.g., membranes from a pig’s stomach) are reformed Nature, metamorphosed through the artist’s skilled hand and into an artwork that gains new subjectivity and therefore narrative which has both a general and individual thought stimulations. The visual sensation of her concept (membranes of pig stomachs fixed onto a black base in a square frame, like miniatures, measuring 20cm x 20cm, and as such mathematically arranged into a synchronized system that is positioned on a wall, thus brings up associations of tapestry) lies in the multiple monochromatic mimesis of the spectacle, which changes from square to square, with an accent on texture as a dominant element and at the same time creating a rhythmically visual dynamic. Every square has its own different poetry, its own stamp, existence and pulse.”

Ana Frangovska, curator

Accompanied by a publication with an essay by Ana Frangovska, Curator at the National Gallery of Macedonia - download (PDF).