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Ana Pintarić / Utopian Bodies

Solo exhibition

FROM THE PREFACE OF THE EXHIBITION

The cycle of works Utopian Bodies was conceptually derived from a drawing called Monkey. I took the motif of the Monkey from the context of the visual reconstruction of the female Ardipithecus ramidus – an illustration based on archaeological finds of bones of an individual from the genus of extinct primates.
What initially fascinated me about this illustration is the fact that it is not a representation based on the observation of a "real" body (since there is no living Ardipithecus to observe), but a representation based on scientific assumptions of the phenomenological reality of the body. In other words, it is based on an imaginary body. The real object, the skeleton of the Ardipithecus, is "embedded" in the representation of the assumption of a body that does not exist outside the drawing.


My relationship with the Monkey is similar to that between a girl and her Barbie. A Barbie is a representation in which a girl inscribes her identity in the context of a game. Within the game, Barbie finds herself in situations where a girl cannot be in the real world. Therefore, Barbie represents a representation of a girl within a fantasy called a game.
In the game with the Monkey, I write my identity in her place in order to "deny" the impossible position of the (female) subject in which I find myself in the real world. But why is it advantageous to play as a Monkey? The Monkey, like the Barbie, does not exist except as its own representation. Barbie is a representation of the "ideal woman", which does not exist in reality. The Monkey is a representation of the idea of the body of the female Ardipithecus (as an assumption in the head of an archaeologist), that is, a body that does not exist as such in reality, nor has it ever existed.

My own body, which in turn exists in reality, is in a constant position of affirming the idea of the female body.
"Femininity" is not realized by mere biological determination of sex at birth, but by a constant effort to respect general standards of beauty and femininity. To be a woman is to be an inherently inadequate or incomplete representation of an ideal form.
On the other hand, to be a Monkey is to be, at the same time, both a representation and an ideal form of one's own body. A Monkey has a body that is not "lived" in the real world, but exists only as an image. This is a feature of the "utopian body" that appears to me as the ultimate fantasy.


In the famous work of the artist Barbara Kruger, over a halved female face, the warning words "Your body is a battleground" are written in red font. [Your body is a battlefield]. This work was created in the context of the political struggle for the reproductive rights of American feminists. The living body is the scene of ideological, political and legal disputes. These assumptions, however, do not apply to the Monkey since she, as a representation of the representation, lives within the utopia of drawing. The word "utopia" comes from the Greek from which it is translated literally as "non-place". Utopia inherently does not contain soil, so it is not in danger of becoming a battlefield. The Monkey lives drawing.
Drawing functions as a fantasy in which the image and the body are the same. At the same time, the ideal form and its representation. A utopia in which the tension between the idea in the world of pure forms and representation in phenomenological reality is resolved, and one is equated with the other.

Ana Pintarić

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR

Ana Pintarić was born on November 19, 1999 in Čakovec. She graduated from the Čakovec School of Civil Engineering – Department of Interior Architecture Design. In 2024, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, at the Department of Painting in the class of prof. dr. art. Ksenija Turčić.
It is most often expressed in drawing techniques.
So far, she has had solo exhibitions in Lauba – House for People and Art as part of the "Send It On" cycle in 2023 and in the informal Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts-Uža in 2023, as well as in numerous group exhibitions, of which she singles out the group exhibition Palimpsetti with Ana Simić and Jana Jovašević at Gallery '73 in Belgrade in 2024, the exhibition Erste Fragments 17 in Lauba in 2021, as part of which she was awarded a scholarship, a student exhibition at the FLU Gallery in Belgrade in 2022, side exhibitions as part of the 6th and 7th Biennial of Painting, and an exhibition at the SC Gallery entitled "Are You a Serious Gallery?" 2024.
In 2025, she curated the group exhibition "Thank you for the roses" together with Marina Popović at the Siva Gallery. She lives and works in Zagreb.

The exhibition at the Šira Gallery can be viewed during the Gallery's working hours (Mon-Fri: 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., 6 p.m. – 8 p.m., Saturdays: 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.) until 27/06/2025.
The exhibition was realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb.