Can I rest in peace?
2022
performance & text
biodegradable dress made by Maja Halilović
In her work, Anastasija Pavić addresses questions that have long preoccupied the human race, such as the creation of life and its extinction. Yet at its core, her work shows how these fundamental concerns often feel insignificant when compared to the societal demand for women to remain eternally beautiful in an era of normalized aesthetic surgery. When it becomes possible to get your lips done at the same place where you wax, the weight and danger behind the pursuit of eternal beauty become fully visible.
Pavić examines how the normalization of risking one’s health in pursuit of an ideal often culminates in compliments like “She ages so elegantly,” “She has no wrinkles at all,” or “She is so slim-thick, like Kim K.” The expectations placed on women have always been high, with centuries of lead poisoning, arsenic, and countless other harmful substances in beauty products worn as a badge of honor. A woman has long been expected to sacrifice her health for the sake of achieving ultimate aesthetic value.
The artist explores how social media has reshaped and intensified these pressures. While the wealthiest can afford the best surgeons, trainers, and estheticians, this fantasy is marketed to the average woman as something she can, and should pursue, sometimes at any cost.
Within this space of hypersexualization, expectation, and denial of the body’s natural aging process lies Can I Rest in Peace, a work that asks the essential question: How important is it to be a beautiful corpse?
– Jovana Trifuljesko, art historian and curator
PERFORMANCE TEXT
When I feel alone in this world, I just want to fall asleep and never wake up
The idea of waking up next morning and being conscious
the whole day seems unbearable
At this point all that matters to me is being pretty
I worry that my mortician won’t pluck my eyebrows correctly
and I will be in a casket with a unibrow
I have a few hairs that can be pulled out only if you put the
tweezer at a correct angle, it just takes too much patience
and he/she won’t do it right
Do you think that fashion nova will make copy of a dress
that Kim Kardashian will be buried in?
I would rather die from being shot than being stabbed
Blades are too phallic
Maybe I should put enough silicone in my body that I
couldn’t drown myself
I would just float
Maybe at the end my freshly dyed blond hair will keep me
alive
Like a life vest
Maybe I should make my nails pointy and long, so I could
hurt you
Leave me alone!
But I don’t want to be alone
For who am I performing then?
When I was a child my mothers favourite perfume was Angel
by Thierry Mugler
It gave me headaches, but I still hugged her until I felt dizzy
My favourite lipstick is in shade 65 Seductress
I am projection of your fantasies and desires
I can t stop thinking about that saying “always wear a pretty
underwear in case you get hit by a car”
Dying is embarrassing
Stop examining my body under that harsh led light
Maybe it’s okay, but only if I wear my new hot pink lace set
Live fast
die young
bad girls do it well
I’m gonna make myself harder to kill by becoming more artificial
Everyone will love me or be scared
It’s better to have your face rearranged on the operating table then
in a fight
It would be such a shame to decompose,
like humans have done it for most of recored history
I’m above that
I wanna be as pretty as Snow White, covered in glass
like I’m in a museum
or an art gallery
