VLASTA DELIMAR: Riječani, provjerite jeste li živi

According to the concept by curators Katerina Jovanović and Sabina Oroshi, the exhibition brings together works that, across different decades, examine the body, the gaze, sexuality, memory, public space, and intimacy. Delimar exposes the body, but does not surrender it to the gaze; instead, it provokes discomfort, disrupts social habits of seeing, and reveals the tendency to label art as provocation, to explain it, or to moralize it. The project is conceived as an anti-retrospective and, rather than offering a linear overview of the artist’s oeuvre, it focuses on returns, new readings, and works that, over decades, continue to provoke, unsettle, and open space for public dialogue. A special place in the Rijeka presentation is given to the work Visual Communication – Korzo Rijeka (1983), in which the artist wrote words on a public surface among passers-by on Korzo, creating temporary signs of communication within everyday urban life. The exhibition at Kortil opens a broader project dedicated to Delimar’s oeuvre in the year of her 70th birthday, which will also be presented in Zagreb, Split, and Ljubljana. This anniversary framework does not aim to conclude her career, but instead repositions her work within the current social moment, marked by the rise of conservative ideologies, anti-gender policies, misogynistic discourse, bodily surveillance, and renewed forms of militarization. For this reason, Vlasta Delimar’s works today appear as powerful and relevant as they were at…