the THREE MONKEYS

video installation

Maja Rožman tries to find an answer to the question “Should artists be politically and socialy engaged in their work?”. Questioning the problem, the author studies the three wise monkeys: Mizaru covering his eyes and is therefore not being able to see anything evil, Kikazaru covering his ears and is therefore not being able to hear anything evil, and Iwazaru covering his mouth and is therefore not being able to say anything evil. Today, the phrase “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” is commonly used to describe a person who doesn’t wish to be included in a particular situation.
On the other side, in the West have emerged a variation where the monkeys move their hands from their ears, eyes, and mouth and the phrase that goes with this variation is “listen to everything, see everything, and talking loudly in defense of freedom if you want to live in peace.”
Majas work tries to unite the Eastern and Western versions, where the Eastern version chooses not to look back at the socio-political events while on the other hand the Western version puts itself at the exact opposite finding it impossible not to look back at them. In accordance with those statements, Maja performs the actions of the three monkeys–covering her eyes, ears, and mouth with her hands–and at the same time tries to resist them. In this way, she confronts those two ideas and expresses her inability to answer the above mentioned question.

exhibited @ 2010 Projekt6: Directions for Rapprochement #2, O3one Gallery, Beograd (SR)

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