Croatian Artist Renata Poljak at N.Y. Exhibition

Artists question their own views of violence and visual simulations at a time when the media completely distort the image of violence.

Today, in modern western societies, there is an increasing fear of death that media of mass culture through interpretation and representation exploit and manipulate with our attitude towards violence. Through works by international artists from various social contexts, the exhibition “T.error – your fear is your external object” focuses on the psychological effects of violence and terror that are beginning to increasingly dominate the media and our everyday lives. 

Screening of Renata’s film “Velika očekivanja” (Great Expectations) 

Artists analyse their own attitudes towards violence, fear and visual simulations in a time when the media are distorting and completely objectifying violence. Croatian artist Renata Poljak will show her film “Velika očekivanja” as part of the New York exhibition, which in 2006 won three awards: for best short film at the BlackBox festival in Berlin, the second prize at the Mediterranean Film Festival in Siroki Brijeg and best domestic film at the 4th Tabor Film Festival.

“Velika očekivanja”, which was filmed after her own script. Thinking about human callousness and the creation of a hybrid pseudo-urban context, the artist noticed connections and interlinks in family relations, architectural urbicide which is happening in Split and its wider environment, as well as violence on stadiums, which in the end ended up in an incident registered in the newspapers.

Violence, once justified by war, has taken on a new form in construction. Big houses are hovering over small ones and are becoming increasingly bigger and increasingly uglier. A mentality saturated with tourism, greed, callousness, negation of every tradition is a continuation of violence and a reflection of a new taste that occurred in post-war Croatia and it is reflected in the houses of the nouveau-riche. Through a prism of a personal story, Renata Poljak warns of the creation of a new moral that is becoming collectively accepted.