Video work and instalation, 1996
Video work: 5 min, 30 sec, 1996.
The surreal dimension of I, the Housewife! is fascinating: a women, wearing a diving suit under water, is performing the usual chores – cleaning, ironing – and the persistence to complete them results in an extremely absurd situation. The prescription of behavior, inexorability of forms given, has been questioned.
Deliberately manipulating the clichés, and masking various situations, Renata Poljak plays with the dominant social stereotypes, although seemingly accepting them. The important determinants of her work are various experience of bodily motion, and the contradictions associated to them – absence of purpose and impossibility to move forward.
— excerption of a text by Ana Devic
(Produced with help of Ivo Dekovic, 1996)
I, the Housewife!
Video instalation, 1996
A video recorder and a television set are placed inside a specially adapted washing machine. Dirty white sheets project out of the opening, through which viewers see a television screen. The video work I, the Housewife!, is being played continuously.
Award:
1997 Annual Award of Women`s Art Center Electra, Zagreb, Croatia for I, the Housewife!