Fluids Within Us, Fluids Beyond Us
At the X Vitamin Gallery in Belgrade, Edita Kadirić presents a carefully selected group of her recent drawings and paintings in an exhibition titled Balsam. A nomadic artist whose work we have followed for over two decades, she fortunately always returns, offering us the pleasure of engaging with her new creations.
Last year, at the Salon Oto Bihalji-Merin, I had the honor of bringing together artists Katy Voznicki and Edita Kadirić in an unusual symbiosis through the exhibition Brutal Tenderness. Although I had been familiar with Edita’s work for many years, this was the first time I approached her art with full attention and sought to understand and articulate in words what I was seeing.
Brutal tenderness remains the phrase that best captures the experience of encountering the red, black, and ethereal bodies of girls, young women, deer, rabbits, octopuses, and the intertwinings and fusions of human and animal forms. These are boundaries Kadirić neither acknowledges nor respects — the fluidity among species is a kind of magic that excites and frightens her, as it does us, the viewers. What are these beings? What are they doing together? Are they protecting each other’s tender bodies and souls from the harm lurking around every corner? Or are they transforming into hybrid monsters, preparing themselves to step irreversibly into a merciless world?
The tension between painful innocence and the suggestion of some veiled, yet unexplained violence, exerts a hypnotic pull. It’s no coincidence that Kadirić admires Henry Darger, one of the most imaginative and poignant American outsider artists. In his secret lifelong project Vivian Girls, Darger created an imaginary army of girls fighting evil, injustice, and abuse. Both Darger and Kadirić venture into the sensitive territory of portraying naked children’s or adolescent bodies, charged with multiple meanings. Are these, for the artist, archetypal bodies that dwell within us — simultaneously dark shadows of destruction and fountains of life-giving balm?
For Kadirić, Balsam is a metaphor for the eternally circulating, pulsating force of life in nature — an ancient liquid, alchemically elusive, shifting in color, density, and volume. At times it appears as a red pool of blood, a tar-black puddle, a swirling river, or a shallow brook from which deer drink. The Balsam cycle is saturated with black matter, a dense fluid linking us to the past and future, to other histories from which we, too, have emerged. From this substance, black beings are born — beings that, according to the artist, refuse to absorb any other color. This charred and moist black cloud persistently brings its own mythology. Through these mysterious, primordial creatures, the artist celebrates this brief moment on Earth — a single inhale and exhale — life itself.
In the Pastoral cycle, Kadirić wonders: what if the idyllic, luminous hunting scene — a familiar motif from tapestries — were reversed, and the animals gained full control over humans? We do not know what happened or who hurt the girl lying there, blood flowing from her mouth, but the calm way the animal drinks from that pool fills us with a deep unease. The artist says she feels like the deer, the girl, and the hunter — all at once.
Throughout human history, the flow of the balm has been violently interrupted.
Does the victim always eventually become the executioner? A question that weighs heavily, hovering above us. Perhaps we have witnessed it directly. Perhaps we read and hear about it every day. Does it say something about where the world is heading — and where we are going with it — wounded, fragmented, some of us even torn apart? The question is not only whether we can survive, but whether the vital balm might again course through us all — whether Eros can truly overcome Thanatos, rather than merely embalming us from within while we remain lifeless.
Edita Kadirić peels away the layers of pain and sorrow until she reaches the final one — the soft skin with no defenses left. Small, serious, wise faces gaze at us, trying to understand how to survive, how to mutate, how to escape the trap of adulthood, how to avoid the hunter’s snare or the sting of an arrow. In this ultimate state of vulnerability, nothing can be hidden anymore. Salvation does not come from the saint with the halo — she can no longer comfort or embrace her children; she is confused and frightened, almost catatonic. It seems the children are the ones consoling her.
In the Black Beach cycle, the artist describes stories of remnants — fragments of relationships we pass through in life. She dreamed of walking across these chipped pearls and tossing them into the sea. The beach was black, as was the sea.
Tears must flow — this purest balm magically transforms into pearls. The pearls create protective membranes on the face, or pour from the mouth in endless strands, flowing back into the ocean. In Kadirić’s work, sorrow is always also beauty and strength. She never allows her characters to be defeated, broken, or subdued. Behind them, vegetation flourishes — life flourishes — flowers bloom, fruits swell. The girls grow and transform. They have seen, felt, and learned too much already. Yet their skin remains a delicate, porous membrane — one that lets the poison drain out and the fluid of life energy and love flow in. And that is why they will never become executioners.
Senka Latinović
