Kata Mijatović: Anima, animalis

As part of the exhibition program of the Drugo More association at the Filodrammatica Gallery (Korzo 28/1, Rijeka), visual artist Kata Mijatović will present the installation Anima, animalis from February 6 to 27. The exhibition will open on Thursday, February 6, at 7 PM, preceded by a conversation with the artist at 6 PM, moderated by Rijeka-based artist Milijana Babić in the main hall of Filodrammatica.

Kata Mijatović (Branjina, 1956) is a Croatian multimedia visual artist working in the mediums of installation, spatial interventions, and performance. Since 1990, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions and artistic projects on both domestic and international stages. From 1996, she has held numerous solo exhibitions, performances, and spatial installations in Croatia and abroad. Her work explores the relationship between the conscious and unconscious, the visible world, and invisible inner mental spaces, examining the dichotomy between these realms, their interactions, and the possibility or impossibility of communication between them. Within these explorations, a significant portion of her work is dedicated to the phenomenon of dreams, which serve as the primary framework and content of these pieces. By delving into the realm of dreams, she addresses the perception of reality within the connections between the conscious and the unconscious.

The installation Anima, animalis is based on approximately fifty texts taken from the online domain Dream Archive. This platform, created in 2013 as the central work of the artist’s project Between Heaven and Earth for the 55th Venice Biennale, has since received more than 2,300 dream descriptions submitted by users in various languages.

The selected dreams for this installation are characterized by the presence of animals as the main protagonists in their manifest content, highlighting the inseparable connection between the animal and the unconscious.
In the artist’s words, “the dreams function on an individual level as psychograms, imprints of the Anima that, in the unconscious, takes on animal forms to connect the dreamer with various archetypes of animality.