Relic of a Feeling, was conceived for the exhibition in the Lapidarium (Gallery Božidar Jakac) as a way of completing the waxing and waning of emotional trajectories unfolding across the rooms. The narrative leads from emotions of others and our perception of them, through artist’s internal world and outward again toward an understanding of emotional flow as something shared and universal. It culminates in a final shift, toward the singular viewer who finds themselves in the relic room.

The room is a gesture, where the artist passes on an experience to someone else and relinquishes control over how it will be received. The experience belongs to the one who enters. The brittle blackened branches cover the room, which becomes a vacuum where the acts of a step, the snap of a branch and the triggered emotion echo in a moment of introspection. What remains is a subtle shift in awareness, a heightened sensitivity to one’s own presence within the space. 

The twigs, intended to be broken, parallel the fragility of a human experiencing strong emotions. The result of cracking a branch mimics the body’s reaction at an emotional peak – a voice crack, a cry, a scream, a shiver, a sudden rise of goosebumps. Like the threads that bind yet never fully secure, the experience resists permanence. It lingers only as a trace, a residue of having felt something that cannot be entirely retrieved or repeated. The sound of a snap fades, but the body remembers. 

Text by curator Deja Becaj