performance, 2. Biennale kvadrilaterale BQ_2 - Culture hero, MMSU, Rijeka, 2007
reenactment with Neven Aljinović Tot, MMC / Student Center, Zagreb (HR), 2009
Siniša Labrović is well known to local audiences as a socially active performer whose works always carry a measure of refined humor. In the performance titled Artist Licking the Heels of the Members of the Audience (first performed in 2005), Labrović literally, with no restraint, licks the heels of the audience. The work is a part of a series of actions that convey well-known Croatia phrases like "licking the heels" or "walking on thorns", one of the actions attempting to engage at a more intense level with the audience, stirring up emotion. Although the artist is sucking up to his audience, literally licking it's heels, the turn of the phrase is s turn from subordination to a position of psychological supremacy. The discomfort felt by the audience during the physical encounter of the artist's tongue with never clean enough feet, and the unexpectedness of the situation allows for this shift.
Siniša Labrović (HR)
Siniša Labrović was born in 1965 in Sinj. In 1997, he took a degree in Croatian language and literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. He began to go in for the visual arts in 2000. He had his first solo show in the Otok Gallery in Dubrovnik. He has shown his work at numerous collective and solo exhibitions, carried out actions and performances as well as urban interventions, in Croatia – in Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Zadar, Pula, Rijeka, Split, Šibenik, Osijek and Poreč, and abroad – in Novi Sad, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Graz, Carlisle, Reykjavik, Regensburg, Dundee, Istanbul, Paris, Copenhagen, Brussels, Venice, Budapest, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Bratislava, Prague, New York, San Sebastian and Lodz. In 2005 he attracted the attention of world media (such as Reuters, BBC, Ansa, New York Post, Guardian, Times, NBC, ABC) with his work Flock.org, a reality show in which the contestants were sheep. In 2007 he won third purchasing prize at the first T-HT/MCA Competition in Zagreb for Family Diary. This work is part of the permanent display of the MCA.
The paper Slobodna Dalmacija proclaimed the performance Gloria done on the Split waterfront one of the five best cultural events in Dalmatia in 2007. In 2010, at the 16th International Theatre Festival in Pula he won the Vjetar prize for the performance of Gloria. His work is kept in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, the Museum of Fine Art in Split, the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik and in private collections. In 2009 he exhibited at the 11th Istanbul Biennial. He represented Croatia at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale with the Pulska grupa, Hrvoslava Brkušić, Igor Bezinović and Boris Cvjetanović.
sinisa.labrovic@gmail.com
