"We are discontinued beings,
individuals who die lonely
in an incomprehensible adventure,
and yet we feel the yearning
for the lost continuity"
(Bataille)

Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, 1997

curator Liljana Nedelkovska

Iskra Dimitrova's project, Memento mori*, conceived and carried out in the 'shelters' of the Museum, is a kind of spatial inscription of the idea of death. Everything serves this idea: the abandonment of the exhibition rooms of the Museum; the isolated position of the space in the subterranean part of the Museum; the stairs which we must descend; the inaccessibility to outdoor light; the isolation of sounds; separation, darkness... as if in a tomb... We are involved in a ritual of "absorption of death"**: death freed from its instrumental, everyday meaning and raised to the level of symbolic exchange.

Thanatometamorphosis, Bridal Chamber and Remains are three situations of experiencing and coming face to face with death.

I Thanatometamorphosis: black room with a black body (corpse);
II Bridal Chamber: white room with a white body (soul);
III Remains: white room with a contorted body (corpse or fetus?).

Despite its poetic overtones, despite its references to certain general paradigmatic and symbolic situations (the symbolism of the circle), Iskra Dimitrova's cryptosofy gives an odious impression. And it is precisely here that the paradox of the experience of death lies, to which the Memento mori environment alludes: surrounded by death every day, we no longer notice it. "Persecuted and censored everywhere, death springs from everywhere. This time no longer as apocalyptic folklore - the kind that could preoccupy the imagination of certain epochs - but, deprived of any imaginary substance whatsoever, it turns into the most banal reality and takes the form of the very principle of reality that governs our lives."******

"My death everywhere, my death that dreams"*******

*Remember that you must die, mediaeval carnivals organized with the purpose of reminding people of the existence of death, to which Iskra Dimitrova refers.
**Jean Baudrillard, Simbolicka razmena i smrt (L'Echange symbolique et la mort), Decje novine, Gornji Milanovac, 1991
*** Ibid.
**** Ibid.

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