Hippo Must Be Beautiful

Zdravko Joksimović displayed small sculptures on specially designed plates at his exhibition, “Hippo Must Be Beautiful”, along with a video of his opening performance, in which he created a sculpture “from scratch”. The exhibition aimed to connect culinary and fine arts through parallel, double, and reversible appropriation. Joksimović challenged the idea that culinary is an art, but fine arts cannot be perceived as culinary. He wanted to demystify the act of art and make it accessible to everyone, and to demonstrate the creation of a small sculpture at the kitchen table in front of the audience.

Joksimović’s performance raised the question of whether an autonomous field independent of control mechanisms existed and whether freedom was possible only from the inside, given that everything presented publicly was subject to general rules of manipulation. The artist introduced expressions from other fields into culinary vocabulary, creating ambiguity and “noise” that suggested that something was not quite right. The ironic glorification of success as “praise for modern folly” was the basis of his artworks.

Joksimović aimed to expose the manipulations performed on us daily as consumers, and to suggest that nothing is as it seems, nor is it what we are instructed to believe. By eliminating these manipulations, we can purify ourselves and our view of life.