Umjetničko djelo Brede Beban u kontekstu feminističke i postkolonijalne teorije
Authors:   , Munivrana Martina 
Published: July 2023

I find the key reason in studying this artistic oeuvre in the fact that Breda Beban’s overall oeuvre is less known to the Croatian expert public, and that she has mostly been viewed fragmentarily and through the prism of her video works produced after 1991, which she actualised in cooperation with her artistic and life partner Hrvoje Horvatić, and by herself following his passing. However, her artistic work had begun much earlier. With her work, the artist marked the 1980s, and heralded with her earlier works the manner of approach to the artform of performance through topics of temporal transience and the power of memory, as well as through studying the spiritual dimensions of the geopolitical landscape as a mirror of psychological states and dispositions. Breda Beban’s artistic legacy has hitherto not been fully processed and analysed. A larger part of the artist’s processed oeuvre is mostly related to her foreign production, while part of the recorded data on Breda Beban’s artistic activity prior to migration comes in fragments, from the circle of her friends and through a small number of published reviews or publications (there are few papers or critical texts published about the artist). It is important to note that Breda Beban’s artistic formation began in Zagreb (where she spent her formative years and most of her life), and that it defined her artistic direction; therefore, it is important to define her position within the review of the Croatian art scene. This artist constitutes an extremely important part of the women’s art scene, and laid the foundations with her initial works for feminist contextualisation of art of the 1980s, which has not yet been executed, which inter alia also refers to the Croatian trans-avantgarde, i.e., the New Painting, which meant a kind of domination of women artists in the medium of painting, dominated by men. Furthermore, the analysis of the artist’s oeuvre will indicate that Breda Beban opened up with her work a discursive space, within which particular oeuvres based on the performative construction of identity can be viewed; therefore, it is of utmost importance to position and comprehensively consider her work. The analysis and evaluation of Breda Beban’s creation in the context of autobiographic and postcolonial body of performance is the main topic of this research; new interpretation and reading of her work through feminist and postcolonial theory has been provided through monographic approach to the available holdings and legacy. The aforementioned serves as proof that Breda Beban’s creation can be defined as feminist work that indicates the problematics of questioning the construction of identity through performance. With this research, Breda Beban’s overall creation has been considered, analysed and classified for the first time, all of which incorporates it into contemporary research approaches to feminist performing arts. When speaking of Breda Beban’s artistic work, it is necessary to take into consideration two important characteristics. On the one hand, we can speak of exceptional diversity of genres, which enables this artist’s oeuvre to be placed into wider artistic context, while on the other hand, it can question the performative constructions of her identity and belonging, resulting from the inseparability between her private life and status of emigrant and her artistic activity. Life events and circumstances which led to certain changes (the loss of her homeland, the emigration and the change in her living and artistic environment, her partner’s passing) were substantially intertwined with her artistic work; therefore, Breda Beban’s creation cannot be considered without an insight into her private life marked by cultural and geographical heritage, a change of residence (from childhood to maturity) with the purpose of finding a new home and that which is represented by home, the position of continuous migration, the collaboration with her life partner, the loss of her partner, etc. We should also consider certain changes on the political and geopolitical plane, which conditioned her personal decision to go into exile. Therefore, the analysis of the aforementioned requires a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research approach and the application of new methodological and culturological methods which enable these phaenomena to be observed from a higher perspective. The topic was approached dichotomously: her artistic work and production were analysed at the genre, aesthetic and theoretic level based on analytical procedures inherent in the socalled critical theories, French Poststructuralism, feminist critique of representation; the problem of the inseparability of life circumstances and their influence on artistic expression was studied with a multidisciplinary approach dominated by feminist postcolonial theory, related to contemporary research practices of feminist performing arts. The starting point is based on the theory of the performative as a manner of formation of the subject and its identity, postcolonial theory of the notion of otherness as accepting the reality of the other and the concept of meaning of other, and on the theory of liminal identity of performance; the area of this research will also move towards theoretical interest so as to become aware of the difference in conceiving and applying feminist theory when constructing a different kind of subjectivity and identity that is not defined merely by the cultural heritage of the pertinent identity. Based on these postulates, the work is contextually divided into two wholes: The first part provides an overview of the artist’s life and creation, and an analysis of Breda Beban’s artworks with the method of genre analysis, whereby overall creation is analysed through three temporal units (independent artistic activity: painting and performance, photography, activity through binary position with partner Hrvoje Horvatić, and independent activity following her partner’s passing: video performance, video art, film). In the analysis, emphasis is put on the performative component of her creation: the use of the body as the medium, the appropriation of geography of the lost homeland and cultural heritage in the construction of the works’ poetics, the adoption of personal experience of exile and migration, personal experience of physical loss. Particular attention is given to music art, the influence of theology (Pavel A. Florensky: Ikonostasis) and film art (Sergei Parajanov: The Colour of Pomegranates; Carl Theodor Dreyer: Gertrud, etc.), which formed the aesthetics and poetics of the artworks. The placement in the temporal context is engaged in the questions of methods of development of relationship towards the de/construction of identity, through a prism of postcolonial theory that includes an interdisciplinary link with women’s and cultural studies. Particular characteristics in the analysis stand out as artistic performatives and construction, typical for this artist’s performance. The second part of the research work proceeds from defining Breda Beban’s creation as a feminist artist who problematises in her works the construction of identity through postcolonial theory, while placing the artist herself in a position of artist-emigrant without an appropriate homeland, which ceased to exist due to certain geopolitical events. This brings us to the problem of placing the oeuvre in the context of national non/belonging. With the analysis of the process of revision of personal history via critical discourses that do not omit otherness, with the aim of constructing the identity with the process of otherness, which requires that the language itself be deliberated on from a postcolonial perspective, the uniqueness of Breda Beban’s artistic phaenomenon is explained. Characteristics such as liminality, hybridity and Third Space have indicated that Breda Beban’s artistic legacy remained in the space “in-between,” in the space of nonbelonging to one or the other; therefore, it was important to conduct this research so as to indicate oeuvres that are not wrought into national overviews, structures and belonging to particular entities. Rather, their work as artistic legacy belongs to everyone, in the hope that it will be properly interpreted and incorporated into international overviews. The final part of the work is engaged in examining the problematics of the performative construction of identity and today’s influence of Breda Beban’s creation in the context of geopolitical changes and the manner in which they reflected on contemporary art scene and the artist’s position. This work sought to provide a comprehensive analysis and theoretical interpretation of artist Breda Beban’s work, which I believe succeeded at to a large extent, as well as that it also indicated the contribution and artistic legacy of her partner Hrvoje Horvatić. Breda Beban’s artistic legacy opened up numerous questions on belonging and nonbelonging, and on the manner in which society as a whole hears voices positioned in the hybrid Third Space of expression. Unfortunately, the analysis of the artist’s oeuvre and creation has shown that these voices are still not sufficiently heard and that a change in paradigm is necessary in the context of valorisation of individual oeuvres.