Can I rest in peace?
2022
performance & text
biodegradable dress made by Maja Halilović
One can notice topics that are essentially questions of the entire human race, such as the creation of life and its extinction. However, the bearing element actually lies in the unimportance of questions of essential value, when placed against the necessity of a woman to remain eternally beautiful in the period of normalization of aesthetic surgery. When you can get your lips done at the same place where you wax, all the weight and danger of eternal beauty appears. In her work, Anastasija Pavić looks back on the normalization of putting her life in danger, for the sake of a lofty goal, which culminates in the compliments "She ages so elegantly", "She has no wrinkles at all!", “She is so slim-thick, like Kim K." The expectations placed on women have always been high, centuries of lead poisoning, arsenic and numerous other harmful substances found in beauty products are a badge of honor. A woman has always had to be able to sacrifice her health, for the sake of her ultimate aesthetic value. The artist skilfully explores and flirts with the way in which social networks have modernized and changed this approach in her artistic work. Although the wealthiest class mostly "work on themselves" because they have the resources to provide them with the best surgeons, trainers and estheticians, that fantasy is sold to the average woman. Like this is something she can and should, sometimes at any cost, participate in. In that in-between space of hypersexualization, expectation and denial of the natural flow of the body and aging is the work Can I Rest in Peace, which 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
