Sign
/1
- Sign
- Znak
- 1971
- b&w photograph
- 17,5 x 24,7 cm
“Sign” and “Sculpture” are two actions documented in photographs representing parts of the artist’s body in various constellations as essential components of body art configurations of the 1970s. “Sign” shows a close-up of the artist crossing his lower arms, while “Sculpture” is an image of the artist’s naked torso with a cloth ribbon stretched across at about the height of his nipples.
Although the vulnerability of male bodies within a matrix of gender has enjoyed an importance equal to that of their female counterparts, which feature a much more aggressive focus on the notion of pain, Raša Todosijević’s actions and performances have always addressed the body as a political tool and a site of intervention. Dejan Sretenović argues that, for “an artist from the margins of the Serbian art system, [this work] inaugurates the ‘proletarian body’ of an artist who, having not been favored by the cultural-bureaucratic elite, could only use his own body both as a working material and instrument for sociocultural intervention.”1 Hence, the body becomes object and subject at the same time, while the subject is in control of the object’s function as it shifts between sign and signifier. While entering “a dialectic relationship between the subject and the object, this body reciprocally produces objects of its action and synchronously serves as the object itself.” 2 W.S.
1 Dejan Sretenović, ‘Art as Social Practice,’ in: “Raša Todosijević. Was ist Kunst?” Belgrade: Geopoetika, 2001. p. 28.
2 Ibid, p. 27.
Although the vulnerability of male bodies within a matrix of gender has enjoyed an importance equal to that of their female counterparts, which feature a much more aggressive focus on the notion of pain, Raša Todosijević’s actions and performances have always addressed the body as a political tool and a site of intervention. Dejan Sretenović argues that, for “an artist from the margins of the Serbian art system, [this work] inaugurates the ‘proletarian body’ of an artist who, having not been favored by the cultural-bureaucratic elite, could only use his own body both as a working material and instrument for sociocultural intervention.”1 Hence, the body becomes object and subject at the same time, while the subject is in control of the object’s function as it shifts between sign and signifier. While entering “a dialectic relationship between the subject and the object, this body reciprocally produces objects of its action and synchronously serves as the object itself.” 2 W.S.
1 Dejan Sretenović, ‘Art as Social Practice,’ in: “Raša Todosijević. Was ist Kunst?” Belgrade: Geopoetika, 2001. p. 28.
2 Ibid, p. 27.