Audio-video installaties. For several years Katarina Zdjelar has been engaged on a series of projects that investigate how we deal with language, and how language, as well as being a series of codes that can be decoded and encoded, also represents a series of negotiations between the code of language and the physicality of speech. She is also concerned with the material nature of language; how it shapes our speaking bodies, how it draws us together into communities, how it makes space and clears space away. For her solo exhibition Back to back by heart at Mirta Demare Gallery in Rotterdam, Katarina Zdjelar will show two sound pieces "Untitled as Ms. Laker" (2006) and "Round Trip. Exercises de Style" (2005) and one video piece "There Is No Is" (2006). The sound piece "Untitled as Ms. Laker" (2006) comprises sound material borrowed from the language school for foreigners in Rotterdam and is one of the various methods employed for learning the Dutch language. This piece deals with the performative contradiction of speech that is produced by and applied on a speaking body. A female voice says: "My name is Peter de Boer, my name is Mr. Karlsbek, my name is Mohamed la Rus, my name is Novia, my name is Anke, my name is Oli, my name is …". The sound piece "Round trip. Exercises de Style" is a collection of the recurring and collective dreams of mobile individuals. This piece works within the terms of a place as/and an identity and their interrelations through the various systems and praxis of their re-presentation. Within the dreams, the return to a home country or a settled country is impossible. A chain of inhibitions and inexplicable accidents follow the dreamers' physical actions and the memory reference of a locality is censored within their deterritorialized subjectivity. The dreamers were from various cultural backgrounds and consequently, used various languages. As the result, the dreams (text) were reproduced (verbalised) by a Dutch female voice and in the English language that is used as a site of the appearance of this phenomenon. The video piece "There Is No Is" (2006), brings out another aspects of language that concerns Zdjelar. Within this piece, the artist focuses on the physicality of language that manifests through the vocalization of two words - the artist's name. Here we can see and hear the numerous negotiations an Asian women goes through in her attempts to pronounce name "Katarina Zdjelar". She writes the name down on her hand but can not pronounce it, she listens to the artist as she indicates what she is supposed to say, the woman repeats it but does not succeed, she tries to twist her tongue into the right position but to no avail, she lets out abstract sounds that might help her find the sound that corresponds to the name Katarina Zdjelar, but gets stuck with the sounds that try to prompt its correct pronunciation. It seems that what she hears does not match what she says. Katarina Zdjelar is a visual artist based in Rotterdam. Her recent activities include: "Would that be alright with you if I bring my cat along", solo exhibition, Hedah, Centre for Contemporary Art, Maastricht, 2006; "Paranoia", a group exhibition, Leeds City Arts Gallery, Leeds, 2006,touring Focal Point Gallery, Southend, 2006 and Freud Museum, London, 2007; "Radiodays", a group exhibition, De Appel, Centre for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, 2005; "Belgrade in the Past and Present", Prodajna galerija Beograd, Belgrade, 2005; "Relocated identities I, Overexposure", a group exhibition, PSWAR, Amsterdam, 2005; "Workin' Progress. Open call for a closed meeting", series of discussions, Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade and Het Wilde Weten Rotteram, 2005; "Think performance", a group exhibition, Museum of Applied Arts, Belgrade, 2005.

Exposerende kunstenaar(s) / exhibited artist(s): Katarina Zdjelar

Mirta Demare, ruimte voor actuele kunst Bergsingel 176b, 3037 GN Rotterdam, 010-2810266/06-20608384, open: do t/m zat 13.00-18.00, zondag op afspraak Expositieperiode van 23 juli t/m 20 augustus 2006