DANICA DAKIĆ

Born 1962 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Danica Dakić moved away from an initial study of architecture to work as an artist, including the diverse media of sculpture, installation, sound and site-specific video projections. Her work addresses the relationship between the body, identity and language and the tension between these elements in the context of the greater social field, particularly that of the Balkans. Dakić’s study of architecture has had a major impact on her practice, with many of her works highlighting a relationship between architecture and the body – architectural spaces, scenes or settings are used as a textual backdrop that provides a separate, theatrical reality to the ones her protagonists play out.

Dakić is concerned with the languages, stories and identities that constitute various European diasporas. She is especially interested in marginalised groups, as shown in her film Role-Taking, Role-Making (2005), which explores the relationship between socio-historical perceptions of gypsies (otherwise known as Roma) and the status of these individuals in the greater European milieu of shifting regions, politics and cultures. Within this film, Dakić analyses the effects of globalisation, war and social change on the notion and conception of what is constituted by ‘home’ and ‘identity’. Her analysis can be seen as a parallel to her personal experience of emigration. Another recurring theme in her work is a fascination with language and the role of the spoken word in the formation of identity. This is manifest in a video-installation, Autoportrait (1999), in which she replaces her eyes with her mouth, each mouth telling fairytales simultaneously in Bosnian and German. In this way, the essentially superficial visual referent for Dakić’s selfhood is replaced by a dynamic complex oral history represented in the composite of the two languages she now uses.

Dakić exhibits the video piece Isola Bella (2007–08) in the 17th Biennale of Sydney. This work comprises a series of tableaux that include musical and oral elements. She uses statements from the residents of the Home for the Protection of Children and Youth in Pazari, near Sarajevo, as her source material. The script for the work was developed through a collaborative process between the artist and residents, who are simultaneously the performers and the audience in the film. In the set richly coloured, nineteenth-century wallpaper depicting an idyllic paradise provides a staged backdrop for her play. With the tender but ironical title, ‘The Beautiful Island’, both artist and inmates act out scenes that, building out from the resonance of the first established institution for the mentally handicapped in Bosnia and Herzegovina, create and expose the personal and social histories, desires, illusions and traumas that relate to that region and which we all can recognise.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2010 ‘Role-Taking, Role-Making’, Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria
2009 ‘Danica Dakić ’, Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany
2009 ‘Casa del Lago’, Kunsthaus Langenthal, Langenthal, Switzerland
2008 ‘Triptychon’, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2003 ‘A Cappella’, National Gallery of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Selected Group Exhibitions

2009 ‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’, 11th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey
2008 ‘Babylon’, Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany
2007 Documenta 12, Kassel, Germany
2003 ‘Poetic Justice’, 8th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey
1999–2001 ‘After the Wall’, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (travelling exhibition)

Selected Bibliography

Sabine Folie, ‘Allegories of Transience’, Danica Dakić, exhibition catalogue, Verlag der Buchandlung, Walther König, Cologne, 2009, pp. 21–31
Tom Holert, ‘A Politics of the Figure’, Danica Dakić , exhibition catalogue, Verlag der Buchandlung, Walther König, Cologne, 2009, pp. 9–18
Roxana Marcoci, ‘Nothing is Guaranteed – Except Contamination’, Danica Dakić: Voices and Images, Danica Dakić (ed.), Revolver, Frankfurt, 2004, pp. 124–25
Bojana Peji, ‘The Angel Effect’, Danica Dakić: Voices and Images, Danica Dakić (ed.), Revolver, Frankfurt, 2004, pp. 60–65
Reinhard Spieler, ‘Voices of Identity’, Danica Dakić: Voices and Images, Danica Dakić (ed.), Revolver, Frankfurt, 2004, pp.60–65