28.05.–04.06.2026.
VANESSA BARAČ: Recollections
Opening: Thursday, May 28th at 20:00
The exhibition is open to visitors from Monday to Thursday during the gallery’s working hours from 5 to 8 pm
Club Kocka Gallery, Youth Center Split, Ulica Slobode 28
The exhibition titled Recollections by artist Vanessa Barač consists of the body in motion, which unfolds not simply through choreography, but through polymorphic form. Through movement, the artist plunges into an ephemeral presence where attempts at inner liberation accumulate alongside moments when consciousness yields and gives way, and the body assumes the role of primary interpreter. Gradually, the body sheds layers of identity shaped by social roles, experiences, memories, and emotions, dissolving them into a state that teeters on the edge of recognition.
Audio-visual installations establish a sort of interspace between the material and the ephemeral, wherein the image continuously flows and eludes, propagating in (evenly-spaced) tiers through the exhibition space. Its presence is never entirely stable. Instead, it disperses, fades, and reassembles, like an effort to hold onto a stable image in a memory which we try to recollect but can never fully fix or restore to its original completeness. Layers of tulle act like membranes, capturing mere fragments of movement and presence, opening a space for inner self-revelation. The bodily form bends, disappears, expands, and contracts into an abstract mass of light and shadow, as if trying to transcend its own boundaries. At moments, it nearly loses all recognizable shape, becoming merely a trace of energy in space.
The visual layer of the work is accompanied by an atmospheric soundscape, functioning as an acoustic element that destabilizes and transforms the viewer’s experience. It evolves through shifts in intensity, rhythm, and frequency, creating a sense of inner tension and turbulence. The artist draws primary inspiration from the work of contemporary American video artist Bill Viola, especially his work titled The Veiling (1995), where human figures appear and vanish through layers of darkness and light, emphasizing the instability of perception. However, while Viola’s work often associates the body with metaphysical and even sacred realms, here the body remains intimate and indeterminate, subject to constant change. Barač does not seek universal notions of transcendence but instead documents the subjective feeling of disappearing within her own mental and emotional upheavals.
By exploring the potentiality of existence beyond imposed identity frameworks, the body becomes a refuge of authenticity for the artist: the only place still able to speak before language, social constructs, and expectations. Yet even in this state, complete liberation is not attained, as the figure remains trapped within layers of projection, simultaneously present and absent, like experiences that persist even as their meaning, form, and boundaries gradually dissolve in the present moment.
Collaborators:
Luka Jukić – camera
Jeronim Jandrić – lightning and sound
Toni Meštrović – mentor
Vanessa Barač is a second-year graduate student of Film, Media Arts, and Animation at the Academy of Arts in Split. Her work focuses on atmosphere and emotional experience within film and audiovisual art, with a particular interest in the relationship between body, space and image. She is the author of short films Plus Minus (2021), Summer Blues (2023), and In Silence (2024), presented as part of the UMAS Review at the Split Mediterranean Film Festival (2025) and in the Film u gostima program at the Postira Seaside Film Festival (2025). Her video installations In the Waves (2022) and Contours (2024) have been exhibited in the annual UMAS exhibitions at MKC Multimedia Cultural Center. She regularly participates in student film productions.
CURATOR Karla Čudina
NMG TEAM Karla Čudina, Natasha Kadin, Vedran Perkov, Antonela Radun, Jelena Rogošić
TRANSLATION Ivan Berecka
DOCUMENTATION Jelena Rogošić
SETUP Karla Čudina, Vanessa Barač, Jeronim Jandrić
DONORS Ministarstvo kulture i medija RH, Grad Split
MAVENA IS SUPPORTED BY Zaklada Kultura nova
SPECIAL MENTION KUM, MKC, PDM
DESIGN Mladen Luketić
PRINT Kopiring
