Vanja Bučan
Looking for Sadiq
The series Looking for Sadiq (2018) presents the author’s reflection and contemplation on her recent travels in Morocco. It could be viewed as a visual travel diary full of representational photographs of local landscapes and cultural details. However, Bučan skilfully translates her experience of Morocco into the photographs by intentionally deconstructing and transforming the images in order to convey her outlook on, as she deems, the society’s anthropocentric relationship towards nature. Because Morocco is commonly perceived as an ancient and mystic land, the evidence and signs of pollution were more obvious to the author. In Looking for Sadiq, Vanja Bučan masterfully incorporates manmade objects made out of plastic and other synthetic materials into her works. Visually appealing blue gloves holding a cluster of bananas; a woman covered with a digitally printed floral scarf with plants in the background; a plastic bottle placed in front of the traditional Moroccan tiles boasting a cap matching the colour of the tiles; a creased plastic bag mirroring the traces of the wind in the surrounding dessert etc. — all these motives play out their aesthetic as well as conceptual roles accordingly. Due to the author’s mastery of staged photography, all objects appear in symbiosis with their environment, add a metaphorical realm to the photographs, and thus become integral elements of “imaginary ecologies” as constructed by Bučan.
Looking for Sadiq, 2018
30 x 50 cm, C print on Fuji archive paper
Edition: 7
Price: 1.100 €
