Lost Words
2014.
sculptural installation: 74 terracotta scrolls in 5 wooden boxes, 65-75 × 5-6 cm
The sculptural installation Lost Words is the author’s synthesis on the all-present crisis of culture, language and mankind. Katušić in this work interprets and describes how the ‘words have lost their meaning because man and his authenticity which is tied with nature, determined by free will, are gone and have changed their meaning in the present era of the technosphere’. The scrolls represent the symbol of spiritual knowledge and information, and on them are written words of a possible living value, that is, of virtues. On the scrolls are written a lot of random letters, which if correctly assembled make up a specific word. As long as the letters are so dispersed, we do not understand the language. When a word is formed, we are given its meaning and significance. Some of the scrolls are left empty, suggesting the possibility of intuitive anticipation which cannot be rationally explained. The symbolism of such a concept directs us to the possibility of a renewal of words and language, their meaning and their (new) reality.
Today, when the question of the existence of true personal freedom, conditioned by questionable values, imposes itself, it is more than ever necessary to reach for the term of virtue and its necessary striving. Evoking the aspiration which formed the thought of Antiquity we return to the civilizational foundations, because precisely in the recognition of the primal and archaic viewpoint of all phenomena and things, from which the current age is woven of which we are witnesses, lies true modernity as well as the artistical one. According to the artist’s viewpoint, archaic in this case represents a closeness with the origins, the eternal human code. To reach the intuitive existence and true freedom, it is crucial to become aware of the forgotten truth. The only way to this is the individual one – by learning and diving into the depths of the Self.
Karla Despot