Martina Miholić

Martina Miholić’s work Ambitious Toys is a sequel to her installation of the same name exhibited in the Karas Gallery in the fall of 2014. The work exhibited in the Bačva Gallery is composed of a small house, more precisely the simulation of a living space that can be found in shopping mall bedroom showcases. The space is ambivalent, created so that one cannot say for sure if it is designed for a girl or a grown woman. The author states that one cannot determine whether the space and objects in it give the impression of a space and objects designed for grown ups that mimic the spaces and objects designed and intended for children, and which in turn mimic the ones for adults. In the bottom part of a drywall pink house there is a small table and a chair, and in the upper part, connected with a silver ladder, there is a bed. In the back, on a kind of shelf, there are different everyday items.

The author states that “if we look at the objects more closely we become aware of the shift in representing reality in which this seemingly children’s infantile world, a house that all the girls rush into, might not be so safe, infantile and pure“. The dominant pink, silver and white, colours the artist used when selecting the objects for the work, transformed the objects for everyday use into fetishized objects of the world of the spectacle. At the exhibition opening, together with the visitors, the author climbed onto the roof of the house. This action created a private space within a social event, the exhibition opening. Martina Miholić believes that in that moment everyone decided to celebrate the opening in a “created spectacular universe“. The world of toys that became part of Martina Miholić’s installation in the Karas Gallery and Bačva Gallery outlines different identities: the ones united by the world of the screen, interface that is still bothered by the difference between the human mind, sight and itself. It strives towards being one so the world of the Empire could be complete and produce life in its totality.¹ This world leaves us hungry, because only in this way we express a desire for its products, which is the reality itself,² as a form of spectacle. Josip Zanki

¹Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Imperij Empire. Zagreb: Multimedijalni institut, Arkzin, 2003, .p. 9.
² Cf. Zanki, Josip. Antropološka konceptualizacija prostora u thangka slikarstvu i suvremenim umjetničkim praksama. The Anthropological Conceptualization of Space in Thangka Painting and Contemporary Art Practices. PhD thesis. Zagreb: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, 2016, p. 44