Márta and Andrea Palášti

Andrea Palášti (b. 1984, Novi Sad) works across artistic, curatorial, and pedagogical boundaries, exploring different positions to create spaces of learning. She is engaged in diverse informal collaborative practices, acting as a more-than-human fitness trainer, an ignorant art(ist) teacher, an unlicensed press photographer, a noted expert on Dalmatian pyrethrum, and a passionate archive researcher. Since 2014, she has also embraced the role of an accidental curator of parental gestures, engaging in an ongoing artistic dialogue with her mother, Márta (b. 1955, Novi Sad) and her father Ivica (b. 1953, Vinkovci). They use photography as a way to practice closeness within the family.

Márta's Flowers

2023 — ongoing

52x fine art prints, mounted on kappa, 9,8 x 17,7cm

The scene depicted in “Márta's Flowers” is always the same: various flowers and plants alternate on the table in ever-changing containers on a tablecloth, with her father on the sofa in the background. For more than two years, Márta has been sending her daughter Andrea pictures of her flowers. A gesture, an update on her own well-being. Due to the physical separation of the two from each other, the pictures develop into much more than just small tokens of affection. As we look at the pictures, we begin to see through the beauty of the flowers. We direct our gaze to the people, the passive figure in the background of the photograph, her father. Andrea notices the gap between her and her father when her gaze is actually drawn to the beauty of the flowers. She writes: "These photographs show much more than just the surface of everyday life. They speak of the unspoken realities of a generation that suffered the Yugoslav wars, displacement and personal loss. My father bears not only the burden of having lost his friends and his job during the war, but also the emotional consequences of a broken world that remains rooted in the ongoing instability of post-war Serbia. And all of this is wrapped up in a bouquet of flowers."

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