REKVIEM two years later

Puppet Theater Ljubljana

April 18-19. 2025

"REKVIEM two years later," an immersive, multi-sensory experience that blended visual arts, performance, poetry, and music. This ambitious project, previously shown at the Casa Tartini Museum in Piran, was a tribute to JAŠA's recently deceased father, the esteemed psychiatrist Gorazd V. Mrevlje.

Grief is a universally shared human experience, a complex emotional process that confronted observers with loss. The work explored where this inner journey took the artist, what it meant to process grief, and what the possible outcomes were. Art, in particular, served as a bridge, creating a space where a son reunited with his father. This encounter, occurring within the realm of an artwork, offered an alternative perspective on loss, allowing for the exploration of memory and affection in ways that physical reality could not.

The project's realisation centered on the meticulous crafting of marionettes, a collaborative endeavor with the puppet theater studio and their esteemed professionals. This ambitious process required a year to fully recreate the characters, seamlessly blending traditional puppet-making with contemporary sculptural techniques, resulting in strikingly hyper-realistic animated sculptures. These characters allowed the audience to transcend ordinary experience, forging a connection with an alternate dimension and facilitating encounters otherwise unattainable.

The project transcended boundaries, inviting viewers into a gathering of parallels, as JAŠA defined it—a series of situations, figures, and sounds that pervaded the stage of the Puppet Theatre. JAŠA’s use of space was central to his approach in developing his extensive projects. “REKVIEM” was created within the architectural framework of Casa Tartini, treating the space almost as a 'ready-made' and using it as an ideal foundation for the work. The transformation process once again focused on the absence and memory of what the project originally was—elements that were essential to JAŠA’s practice. The Puppet Theater’s “The Stage Under the Stars” was chosen for its unique ability to dissolve the traditional separation between the performance space and the audience. The architectural layout was reinserted as a drawing on the floor, eliminating walls and floors, and creating a “see-through” composition that merged the original rooms and their contents into a central installation. This setup allowed the audience to observe it from a distance and then walk into it.

“REKVIEM two years later” engulfed viewers on every level, blurring the lines between reality and the newly constructed space. It created a boundless new dimension, echoing the very essence of movement, passage, and transformation, embodying a sense of renewal and fresh beginnings