Danica Dakic, ISOLA BELLA 2007–8. Tate. © Danica Dakić.
8 rooms in Performer and Participant
In front of an imaginary island film set, a group of participants show improvised performances they have developed with the artist
"The island in the wallpaper is a kind of paradise – no architecture, no trace of people. ... I wanted to connect this imagined island with the people of a socially isolated one."
In the installation ISOLA BELLA, Dakić presents a single-channel video projection in a cinema space. Also on view are a selection of theatrical Victorian-style paper masks worn by the filmed performers, handwritten notes, three film posters and a photograph.
Dakić worked closely with a group of 40 participants to develop performances in front of a reproduction of a 19th century panoramic wallpaper featuring an ideal landscape. Titled Isola Bella (‘beautiful island’ in Italian), the wallpaper inspired Dakić’s work.
The video was filmed at the Home for the Protection of Children and Youth, a residential care home for people with disabilities in Pazarić, a village in Bosnia. While the home caters primarily to children and young people, many residents stay on into adulthood, forming a tight-knit community. During the Bosnian War (1992–95) the home became increasingly isolated from outside contact.
Dakić collaborated closely with the residents, who appear in the film as both audience and actors – singing, dancing, playing the piano and reflecting on their lives and dreams. Together with her team, she created a stage for the participants’ desires and fantasies, giving them the opportunity to step into a utopian ‘Isola Bella’ on film.
Danica Dakić lives in Düsseldorf, Germany and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She often works in collaboration with communities to explore identity, belonging, cultural memory and history.
Danica Dakic, ISOLA BELLA 2007–8
Isola Bella 2007–8 is a single-channel video projection displayed in a dark and sound-insulated space that is carpeted and painted grey. Outside the space a number of props used in the film are displayed in a case on the wall, above which hang three posters bearing the work’s title in large white capital letters against a backdrop of blue sky and palm trees. The film, which lasts just over nineteen minutes, was shot at the Home for the Protection of Children and Youth in the Bosnian village of Pazaric, near Sarajevo, a facility for young people with mental health problems and physical disabilities. The artist collaborated with its forty residents to stage an unscripted performance. Set against the backdrop of historical panoramic wallpaper featuring an ideal and beautiful island, the play presents a series of monologues, movements and musical improvisations enacted spontaneously by the residents. Wearing ordinary clothes and paper Victorian-style masks, the participants are both the actors and the audience for the performance. The title of the work, Isola Bella (Italian for ‘beautiful island’), is derived from the name of the wallpaper design and hints at the history of the place, which benefited from its geographical isolation and survived the Balkan wars of the 1990s without any serious damage or casualties. Most importantly, however, it points to the utopian character of the performance, which blends narratives describing real facts from the lives of the protagonists with fictional stories reflecting their never-to-be-fulfilled dreams and fantasies: one of the inmates, for instance, tells a story of his life on the streets and experience of drug abuse while another projects her future as a legal expert for the United Nations.
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artworks in Danica Dakić
Art in this room
Danica Dakic
ISOLA BELLA
2007–8
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Danica Dakic
ISOLA BELLA
2007