Mia Maraković

Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb

Oops, the book can’t be closed anymore!

Mixed media

15 cm x 21 cm x 10 cm

Books transformed in the manner of visual diaries are my creative focus. Diaries documenting wishes, beliefs, book quotes, ideas gleaned through meditation, etc., are realized in the form of drawings, pictures, collage, and writing. One of the diaries, containing more than 900 pages, can no longer be closed. During the process of modifying it, without deliberate intention, due to the thick layers of paint, it is now a diary that can no longer be returned to its original form of a closed book. The diary is now literally an open book, all the more emphasizing the act of sharing the author’s intimacy to the active observer, but also testifying to my mistake. In this context, I turn the mistake on its flipside, thus making it into an advantage. My intimacy is now literally recorded in an open book, with no possibility of turning back. Accordingly, I invite the observer to also open up to this open book.