SEGMENT FROM CATALOGUE by Irena Bekić//
More than half a century ago, in the year 1946, Frank Capra filmed "It's a Wonderful Life". It was at the dawn of the new age and believing in certainty of sense and purpose was still possible. Well, at least compassion and care for one's fellowmen were fundamental and unquestionable values of the Christian world, their shelter provided individual and collective security. Today, no-one believes in unquestionable values, which have become a slipping ground. Still, there are certain situations - Christmas time being one of them - in which our society gives an illusion of such values being reestablished once again.
Art, however, has no consideration for special occasions - such an occasional discourse contradicting its very questioning nature. Hence, the exhibition Do You Celebrate Christmas? needs to be experienced not as a special occasion, but as a distance from the inciting occasion. Eighteen authors, whose names have left indelible traces in the modern Croatian art practice, gathered around a simple, seemingly mundane topic, exploring their own share in the collective body.
The whole conception is based upon Christmas as a communication system in which personal identities are constructed, along with our constant duality manifest in our need for finding an intimate world to which we can belong on one hand, and from which we can be singled out on the other. That is why it is quite possible to despise the public side of the Christmas story which feeds on mechanisms satisfying consumership, while at the same time developing our own Christmas mythology in which there is still place for shopping and gifts, cakes, shining decorations, lunch at grandma's and advent fairs.