Tanja Ostojic: Looking for a man with a EU passport

It's something about her being all hair-less in both ends that makes her look more naked than just undressed. She's stripped. She's like an alien, a doll, objectified - but not in an easy sexy way.


“While using her own body within different cultural and social contexts as a retort to various power-games Ostojic inevitably entered the realm of "gender troubles". Her reflection on gender issues is focused on the economic and political phenomena that accompany the phantasm of European Community that is shared by many Eastern European countries. In her project "Looking for a Husband with a EU Passport" she reveals and ironizes the truth about the traffic with women, prostitution, pragmatic marriages and all other "side effects" of transition. In such conditions the economy of gendering is inevitably the economy of power over the body. The self-irony of this project is contained in the intentional aesthetics of artist's usage of her own image for the Internet add: her skinny shaved body without any traces of sensuality and seducing gaze or gesture conveys completely opposite visual message. From this conflict of the textual invitation with the visual repulsion was born the gap of ambiguity between attraction and abjection.” … (From essay by Suzana Milevska)