sarajevo swan

This work was made during the 2006 Sarajevo winter festival, Sarajevska Zima. I made the swan for exhibition at the Turkish Culture center with Nine Dragon Heads. As I didnt have a car I walked the work from the studio to the gallery through the city. The experience and the image planted the idea for a second work. After this show I made a second swan for a performance, walking with swan.

My intention was to use the swan as a marker or container for a nostalgic idea; to work in conversation with an existing emotional current, tone if you like, of yearning for better things.

The Swan (labud) was bolted together from cardboard cartons collected in the city, a kind of stored history in both material (used boxes stamped and labelled) and form (the image of swan is overlaid with many layers of poetic and mythic history).

It was an important part of the work that the myth container was also antithetical to the static nature of a monument, moving and of a changing nature, like good poetry.

Materials are recycled cardboard cartons, bolts.

www.sarajevskazima.ba