The Protagonist Beyond the Staging On the series of paintings entitled DDR Frau – Wireless Call

dr. Nadja Gnamuš

In the period of the present historical corrective which, at least as it is seen from the outside, evolves through the presence of women in the media as part of the social and political discourse, the series of paintings entitled DDR Frau – Wireless Calls also includes the »question of women«. But Ana Sluga uses it to reconsider her personal history, and by representing the female protagonist, surrounded by references to the artist’s reminiscences of her family’s past, she expresses it more directly than she ever did before. The intimacy in her paintings is never uncovered but rather concealed, presented without sentimentality, narrative eloquence, or artistic expressiveness; however, it is always the generative basis for her thematic choices and the background onto which potential social, political, and ideological contents is projected. The pictures, in this case centred on the human figure, are removed from her previous works while at the same time, by treating the individual, the particular, and that which is her own, the artist accepts them as an inevitable part and reflection on the social and cultural context, thus inviting them into the wider conceptual frame of her practice. The series entitled DDR Frau – Wireless Calls, among other things, reflects the fact that the artist’s father’s name was Schneider, which pinpoints the real and symbolic source of her identity. The pictures in the series Wireless calls are not simply reminiscences of the broken ties with the past but rather the calls of something real which, according to Lacan, function outside of and independently of one’s idea of it, while the truth itself is structured according to the same principles as fiction, through the dimension of the symbolic1.
In her artistic projects, Ana Sluga establishes a relationship between the personal space and the collective acceptance of the past, of society and reminiscences as the basic formative factors for creating an identity on the one side, and for understanding the present on the other. Memory and its unconscious activity are the author’s two constantly recurrent themes, both in her thematic choices, the motifs and aesthetics of her youth, and in her creative processes which include remodelling archive photographs and allude to the process of remembering. Memory itself is constituted as an amorphous mass of random, arbitrary calls, animated in new, unexpected relations. The artist’s fascination with objects containing the spirit of the past is permeated by her archaeological desire to reconstruct the past and revive the individuals now missing, the long-gone memories and the lost time, all of which invite the artist to return with a questioning as well as nostalgic tinge. Sluga explicitly addressed the sphere of personal with the series Familiar, Transfer, Stalin at Home and the series of photographs entitled Personally, all of them based on some generalized and distant portraits of her relatives, family and friends. As a rule, they are outside any psychical contextualization and thus all the more clear to the viewer’s eye. In this context, any connection between those portrayed and the artist are not clear to the viewer (their names, e. g., as in the series Personally, are replaced by identification numbers), this information not being essential to the interpretation; the method of representation depersonalizes the intimate, painted autobiographically, relying on the code of objectivization. In these paintings, the narrative I seems to be absent.
On the one side, the female figures on the paintings by Ana Sluga are »protagonists of their sex«, and on the other side they are sketches of various aspects of the artist’s personality, which means that through the individual they reflect the expectations of the socially encoded female archetype as it becomes ingrained in a society and culture marked by a prevalently male aspect. The artist tends to ponder critically on the position of women, not so much from the perspective of biological facts but through the network of symbolic roles and social practices, something that Luce Irigaray wrote about. The motivation behind the female optics that Ana Sluga uses in order to research identity is not prevalently intended as a deconstruction of sexual codes or destabilization of stereotyped roles; it rather serves her penetration into her own experiences and personal transformation which evolves through the author’s manifold roles and activities. By comparing the works from the series DDR Frau with the self-exhibitions by Cindy Sherman, for example, we realize that Sluga’s artistic interpretation of the woman is essentially different from Sherman’s photographic self-portraits, for Sherman, by using her own costume-clad and staged body, treats femininity as a social construct, a concept postulated by stereotypes presented by television, film, advertising and other media.
Regardless of the fact that female figures are marked by certain recognizable attributes of the artist herself, be it by glasses, hair-dos, bikinis, a plate with the inscription of her date of birth, a coat or paint, Ana Sluga is never her own formal and exclusive model or representative I; she is transposed into the object of her creative process, into a painted object which is constantly subjected to analytical artistic scrutiny. In spite of mall that, the figure in her paintings, just as any other object that she paints, is removed and treated with a researcher’s distant eye. It is not a speaking, expressive body but rather an objectified one, presented as a stage property that the painter sets into various situations that are meant to activate its associativity and significance. She treats it as a formal element which, with its stylized form devoid of details, enters into a dialogue with other painted elements, with objects, patterned structures, prints, coloured surfaces, and at times quite abstract fragments which establish its setting.
Even though the artist is the centre of these paintings, the manifold painted female forms being her »spectral variations«, these projected figures are not a mooring or a place we can safely inhabit. The figures have no faces that would reveal their map of expressions. A face is an imaginative field with no identity; the I is missing, and that makes direct identification impossible. In its place there is an empty mask which can assume an arbitrary I. Because of the fact that there is no physiognomy that might reveal the subject’s mental and emotional territory, the viewer is being invited to fill the figure with an inner life, just as in the celebrated Mozzhukhin’s experiment where the interpretation of an event is completely dependent on the viewer’s combination of surrounding elements and information that are at his disposal. Generally, the female figure in the artist’s paintings is never clearly defined as far as her experiences and events go, even though, in addition to the personal role, it is at times accompanied by the partial attributes of female archetypes that the author often tints with humour, even self-irony. Such, for example, are the paintings hinting at a diva with a headache, a painter wearing an apron, and a self-confident woman sporting a cigarette, the antiquated symbol of women’s emancipation and equality. However, these are not self-portraits meant to serve as a criticism of socially labelled sexual roles and presupposed identity positions; on the contrary, the female body serves a conductor which helps the artist address a dispersed female as well as personal identity, burdened by many tasks, occupations and fluid identities. Who is she? What does the I constitute?
These works, too, show how identity in being constructed from the past and reminiscences, with objects as the essential building blocks of interpretation. The reminiscences help the author enter her personal story. Even though we are contemplating a modern woman, she is surrounded by markers from the past: vintage patterns, vintage clothes, water bottles, skates, telephones, all of them marked by a recognizable DDR aesthetics of Eastern Europe, summon a certain past time which –contrary to the contemporary social reality – is idealized by the author’s reminiscences of the society of her youth, by her girlish fantasies which allowed desires, advertisements, TV screens, her youthful experiences, and view of the world to flow unencumbered. Objects in the paintings by Ana Sluga are often bearers of reminiscences and story carriers. With them, she is building her own glossary of motifs which, instead of offering explanations and a unique readability, creates a rebus which does not allow the object to be understood as a whole but rather directs the viewer towards deductions, preventing the possibility of including it in a narrative context. The objects are used in an intriguing way: they are often dysfunctional and their purpose is not clear. The same goes for female figures that the author places into unusual, at times grotesque or illogical situations, yet they always incorporate elements of comfort. The figures are shown as doing something, albeit there is no obvious presentation of a concrete, practical activity. There is always a part of the narrative space missing, and all we see is a section of the whole which makes it impossible to realize what is going on. The figures are set so that by rotating, changing postures and angles influencing the viewer’s perspective, with gestures and looks – that don’t actually exist except in our imagination – they direct our attention outwards, to the exterior of the image, to its invisible correlate, which dynamizes and dramatizes the field of vision.
The scenes are thus activated outside the field of vision; the picture mimics an off space, something that is hidden from the viewer, or better, what stays outside his field of vision, of his knowledge, while it is constantly present in his imagination. The compositions take on the logics of the film screen, though not by giving an impression of frozen movement or of being immobilized in time, which is typical of the photographs of film frames, but by functioning as a »hide-and-seek that only reveals one part of the event,« as it was stressed by Bazin as one of the characteristics of the film screen. Likewise, the view in the pictures by Ana Sluga is always partial2 established by the missing link, a trap for kindling the viewer’s curiosity. The artist is not interested in storytelling but rather in the sub-text created »in between the lines«, with omissions. This interspace is where Sluga builds her horizon of significance.
The exhibition does not follow any cinematic logic (a painting does not add to what is expressed in the next painting), and the works cannot be viewed as a sequence in time and space but rather as a series of separate »frames« torn out of a presupposed continuity of an event. The editing does not influence the units; it is implicit from the decisions on how to set a figure into a »frame«, into the staging, or into the sector of visible space. Here, the feeling of being frozen in time, contrary to the situation in a film, is transposed into some instantaneous immobility or an impression of timelessness, enhanced by the absence of Euclidean, or physical, space. A figure surrounded by a couple of stage properties appears in an utterly reduced staging, without a floor or a horizon to frame the scene and arrange the objects and figures; it is an abstract surroundings filled with ornamental structures and coloured surfaces. Ana Sluga’s painting is characterized by a controlled visual rhetoric and economic use of visual means; it is directed towards offering the essential information and emphasis with regard to the contents. The author is precise in coordinating visual effects; by combining techniques, drawing interventions, textures and colour interactions she manages to create a visually luxurious and suggestive space, generating an image full of atmosphere.
Scenes that are practically without any context and real stage take over a fictional territory outside a fixed time and space. The printed patterns in the background provide a harmonious visual comfort, responding a desire for the symmetry of body and spirit, and a neutralization of any conflict. Contrasts in the ornament are silenced; movement is balanced by rest, loveliness by solidity, complexity by serenity, intuition and spontaneity by order. The established artistic atmosphere of space creates a scenery crating the mood for a psychological experience of the figure set in its surroundings as if it was the exterior version of its inner world.
The figures are actually not grounded, they exist in a state of levitation resembling the sphere of the mind that is active in a dreamworld where time and space are considered in a completely different manner and where memories, daily events, thoughts and emotions fluctuate uncensored and unburdened by a routinely instrumental mindset. In these pictures, the imagined and the real exist in a correlation and symbiosis without allowing themselves to drift into a concrete recognition of the revelation of what is hidden.
The spots that elude recognition are essential. They do not simply include empty faces, a visual palimpsest as a game of what is hidden or revealed in certain blurred spots and in some parts of the painting hinting at a remoteness and a veiled presentation, such as is generated by remembered images. In some paintings we notice something more unusual still: a senseless stain, an amorphous, ethereal matter that seems to disappear into a phase of sublimation. This unexpected detail at the side of the figure, an insert that somehow does not belong there, has the role of an unknown, therefore attracting the viewer all the more. Namely, it is recorded in the painting itself, while at the same time being outside it by its meaning. Following Lacan’s optics, we could define it as the visualisation of a blind spot in the image, denoting the inscription of the subject into it, although the same viewer finds it invisible.
The representations of the female figure in the paintings by Ana Sluga are not simple carriers of personal and social metaphors; by the omissions, the missing links in the image that are replacing the presentation, they are constructing its essential mental and representative dynamics, for they prevent its implicit antagonisms to be resolved. It is interesting to see how these paintings, through the play between what is present or absent, leave the door ajar for the eye just enough to attract it by uncertainty which helps interpretation along.
Nadja Gnamuš, PhD

1 Jacques Lacan, Etika psihoanalize (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis), Ljubljana: Delavska enotnost, 1988, p. 18
2 Pascal Bonitzer discusses the partiality of sight crated by the film image in his book The Blind Field (Slepo polje), Ljubljana: SH, 1985, p. 72

Protagonistka onstran mizanscene O slikarskem ciklu DDR Frau – Nemi klic
V času aktualnega zgodovinskega korektiva, ki se vsaj navzven odvija skozi žensko medijsko prisotnost v javnem družbenem in političnem diskurzu, se slikarski cikel DDR Frau – Nemi klici vpenja tudi v »žensko vprašanje«. Toda z njim se Ana Sluga vrača predvsem k premisleku o osebni zgodovini, ki se z reprezentacijami ženske protagonistke, obdane z referencami na umetničino spominjanje družinske zgodovine, izrazi neposredneje kot prej. V njenem slikarstvu intimno nikoli ni razkrito, temveč je prikazano latentno in brez sentimenta, narativne zgovornosti ali likovne ekspresivnosti, vedno pa je generativna podlaga za njen tematski izbor in ozadje, na katerem se projicirajo potencialne družbene, politične in ideološke vsebine. Slike, ki tokrat v prvi plan postavijo figuro, se odmaknejo od predhodnih del, hkrati pa se z obravnavanjem individualnega, partikularnega in sebi lastnega, ki jih umetnica dojema kot neogiben del in odsev družbenega in kulturnega konteksta, umeščajo v širši konceptualni okvir avtoričine prakse. Cikel DDR Frau – Wireless Calls se med drugim nanaša na dejstvo, da je umetničin priimek po očetu tudi Schneider in označuje realno in simbolno mesto njene identitete. Brezžični klici (Wireless calls) niso samo priklici prekinjene vezi s preteklostjo, temveč klice realnega, ki po Lacanu deluje mimo in neodvisno od predstave o njem, pri tem pa je tudi resnica strukturirana po enakih načelih kot fikcija, skozi dimenzijo simbolnega1.
Ana Sluga v svojih umetniških projektih vzpostavlja odnos med osebnim prostorom in kolektivnim sprejemanjem zgodovine, družbe in spomina kot ključnih formativnih dejavnikov pri oblikovanju identitete na eni strani in razumevanju sedanjosti na drugi. Spominjanje in njegovo nezavedno delovanje sta temi, h katerima se avtorica nenehno vrača, tako v tematskem izboru, motivih in estetiki iz časa avtoričine mladosti kot v ustvarjalnih postopkih, ki vključujejo predelave arhivskih fotografij in aludirajo na proces spominjana. Spomin se konstituira kot amorfna gmota naključnih arbitrarnih priklicev, ki se animirajo v novih, nepričakovanih povezavah. Umetničino fascinacijo nad stvarmi z duhom preteklosti prežema arheološka želja po rekonstruiranju preteklosti in oživljanju manjkajočih oseb, davnih spominov in izginulega časa, h katerim se umetnica vrača z vprašujočim, pa tudi nostalgičnim nadihom. Območje osebnega je Sluga izrecno naslavljala s cikli Familiar, Transfer, Stalin at Home in s fotografskim ciklom Personally, ki temeljijo na abstrahiranih in odmaknjenih portretnih upodobitvah sorodnikov, družine in prijateljev. Ti so praviloma izvzeti iz vsakršne psihične kontekstualizacije in toliko bolj odprti za gledalkin/gledalčev pogled. Pri tem povezave med upodobljenci in umetnico gledalki/cu niso očitne (njihova imena so, denimo, kot na ciklu Personally, nadomeščena z identifikacijsko številko) in za interpretacijo del ne predpostavijo njene/ njegove seznanjenosti; intimno je z načinom reprezentacije depersonalizirano, avtobiografsko slikano skozi kod objektivizacije. Pripovedni jaz je v tem slikarstvu vsaj navidezno odsoten.
Ženski liki na slikah Ane Sluga so na eni strani »protagonistke spola« in na drugi obrisi različnih vidikov umetničine osebnosti, pri čemer se prek posameznice reflektirajo pričakovanja družbeno kodiranega ženskega arhetipa, kakor se je oblikoval v družbi in kulturi prevladujočega moškega pogleda. Umetnica kritično razmišlja o položaju ženske, ne toliko z zornega kota biološkega dejstva, ampak skozi omrežje simbolnih vlog in družbenih praks, o čemer je pisala Luce Irigaray. Toda motivacija za žensko optiko, skozi katero Ana Sluga raziskuje identiteto, ni prvenstveno v dekonstrukciji kod spola ali destabilizaciji stereotipnih vlog, temveč predvsem v raziskovanju lastne izkušnje in osebnostne transformacije, ki se odvija prek avtoričinih mnogoterih vlog in dejavnosti. Če dela iz cikla DDR Frau primerjamo recimo s samo-ekspozicijami Cindy Sherman, je na tem mestu Slugina umetniška interpretacija ženske bistveno drugačna od fotografskih avtoportretov Shermanove, ki z uporabo lastnega kostumiranega in insceniranega telesa obravnava ženskost kot družbeni konstrukt kakor ga postulirajo televizijski, filmski, oglaševalski in ostali medijski stereotipi.
Ne glede na to, da imajo ženski liki nekatere prepoznavne atribute umetnice, naj bodo to očala, pričeska, bikini, ploščiča z datumom rojstva, plašč ali slikarske barve, Ana Sluga nikoli ni svoj izrecni in edini model oziroma upodabljajoči jaz, ampak je v slikarskem procesu transponirana v objekt upodobitve, v slikarski objekt, ki je vselej podvržen analitičnemu likovnemu pogledu. Pri tem je figura na njenih slikah, enako kot katerikoli drugi predmet, ki ga slika, odmaknjena in obravnavana skozi distanciran in raziskujoč pogled. Ne gre za govoreče, ekspresivno telo, ampak je telo objektificirano in sámo podano kot rekvizit, ki ga slikarka postavlja v različne situacije, ki aktivirajo njegovo asociativnost in pomenskost. Obravnava ga kot formalni element, ki s stilizirano, nadrobnosti izpraznjeno formo stopa v dialog z ostalimi slikovnimi elementi, predmeti, vzorčnimi strukturami, odtisi, barvnimi ploskvami in mestoma povsem abstraktnimi fragmenti, ki vzpostavljajo njegovo prizorišče.
Četudi je umetnica osišče teh slik in so mnogotere naslikane ženske njene »spektralne variacije«, te figuralne projekcije niso sidrišče oziroma mesto, ki ga lahko z gotovostjo naselimo. Figure nimajo naslikanih obrazov, ki bi razodevali njihov izrazni zemljevid. Obraz je imaginativno polje, brez identitete; jaz je odsoten, s tem pa direktna identifikacija ni mogoča. Na njegovem mestu je prazna maska, ki jo lahko nadane poljubni jaz. Ravno zato, ker ni fiziognomije, ki bi razkrivala subjektov umski in čustveni teritorij, je gledalka/gledalec izzvan, da naseli lik z notranjim življenjem, podobno kot pri znamenitem eksperimentu Možuhina, kjer je interpretacija dogodka v celoti odvisna od gledalčevega sestava okoliških prvin in informacij, ki jih ima na voljo. Tudi sicer ženski lik na umetničinih slikah doživljajsko in dogodkovno nikoli ni jasno definiran, čeprav ga tu in tam, poleg osebnih, spremljajo tudi parcialni atributi ženskih arhetipskih vlog, ki jih avtorica pogosto podaja s humornim, celo (samo)ironičnim pridihom. Takšne so recimo slike, ki namigujejo na divo z glavobolom, slikarko z gospodinjskim predpasnikom ali samozavestno žensko s cigaretom, nekdanjim simbolom ženske emancipacije in enakopravnosti. Toda ne gre za avtoportrete, ki bi služili kritiki družbeno zaznamovanih spolnih vlog in predpostavljenih identitetnih pozicij, ampak je žensko telo prevodnik, s katerim umetnica naslavlja razpršeno, med številnimi nalogami, opravili in fluidnimi identitetami, razpeto osebnostno, ne zgolj žensko identiteto. Kdo je ona? Kaj konstituira jaz?
Tudi na teh delih se identiteta izgrajuje skozi preteklost in spomin, pri čemer so predmeti ključni gradniki interpretacije. Avtorica prek reminiscenc vstopa v osebno zgodbo. Kljub dejstvu, da gledamo sodobno žensko, je obdana z označevalci preteklosti: retro vzorci, vintage oblačili, termoforji, drsalkami, telefoni, ki s prepoznavno DDR estetiko vzhodnega bloka prikličejo minuli čas, ki je - v nasprotju do sodobne družbene resničnosti - idealiziran skozi avtoričin mladostni in družbeni spomin, skozi dekliške fantazije, v katerih so se želje, podobe reklam in televizijskih zaslonov ter mladostna izkušnja in videnje sveta neobremenjeno pretakali. Predmeti so v slikarstvu Ane Sluga pogosto nosilci spomina in posredniki zgodb. Z njimi izgrajuje lasten leksikon motivov, ki namesto razlage in enoznačne berljivosti ustvarja rebus, ki ne dopušča doumetja objekta kot celote, ampak napotuje k dedukcijam in ga ni mogoče vpeti v narativni kontekst. Predmeti so uporabljeni na intriganten način, pogosto so nefunkcionalni in ni jasno, kaj so in čemu služijo. Podobno je z ženskimi figurami, ki jih avtorica postavlja v nenavadne, mestoma groteskne ali nelogične situacije, ki pa vselej vključujejo elemente domačnosti. Liki so prikazani med nekim početjem, pri čemer nikdar ne gre za nazoren prikaz konkretne, praktične dejavnosti. Zmeraj namreč umanjka del pripovednega prostora, zato vidimo zgolj izsek, zaradi česar dogajanja ni mogoče v celoti razbrati. Figure so postavljene tako, da z zasuki, postavitvami in koti, s katerih jih gledamo, s kretnjami in pogledi – ki jih dejansko ni, ampak si jih zamišljamo – usmerjajo pozornost navzven, v zunanjost slikovnega polja, k svojemu nevidnemu korelatu, s katerim je vidno polje dinamizirano in dramatizirano.
Prizori se tako aktivirajo v zunanjosti polja; slika simulira off prostor, se pravi tisto, kar je gledalcu prikrito oziroma ostaja zunaj njegove vidnosti – vednosti, hkrati pa je v njegovi imaginaciji stalno navzoče. Kompozicije prevzamejo logiko filmskega ekrana – ne le z vtisom zamrznjenega gibanja in zastalosti v času, značilnih za fotografije filmskih kadrov – ampak v tem, da delujejo »kot skrivalnica, ki pokaže le del dogodka,« kakor je posebnost filmske slike označil Bazin. Podobno je videnje na slikah Ane Sluga zmeraj parcialno2 , vzpostavlja ga manjkajoči člen, ki je past za prebujanje gledalčeve radovednosti. Umetnice ne zanima pripovedovanje zgodb, ampak podtekst, ki nastaja »med vrsticami,« z izpusti. V tem vmesnem prostoru Sluga gradi svoj pomenski horizont.
Razstava ni zasnovana po kinematografski logiki (slika sliki ne dograjuje vednosti) in del ni mogoče gledati v prostorsko-časovnem sosledju, ampak kot sestav ločenih »kadrov«, iztrganih iz vsakršne predpostavljene kontinuitete dogodka. Montaža se ne odvija med enotami, ampak je implicitna v odločitvah, kako umestiti lik v »kader«, v postavitvi mizanscene oziroma v izseku slikovnega prostora. Občutek zamrznjenosti v času je tu, drugače kot pri filmski sliki, prestavljen v trajanje nekakšne hipne negibnosti oziroma v vtisu brezčasnosti, ki ga stopnjuje odsotnost evklidskega prostora. Figura, obdana z nekaj rekviziti, se pojavlja v skrajno reducirani mizansceni, kjer ni tal in horizonta, ki bi uokvirila prizor in razporejala predmete in figure, pač pa abstraktno okolje ornamentalnih struktur in barvnih ploskev. Za slikarstvo Ane Sluga je značilna disciplinirana vizualna retorika in ekonomična uporaba vizualnih sredstev, usmerjena k podajanju ključnih vsebinskih informacij in poudarkov. Avtorica pretanjeno uravnava likovne učinke in s kombinacijo tehnik, risarskih intervencij, tekstur in barvnih interakcij ustvarja vizualno bogat in sugestiven prostor, ki generira vzdušje podobe.
Prizori, ki so praktično brez konteksta in stvarnega prizorišča, zavzemajo fikcijsko ozemlje zunaj konkretnega časa in prostora. Odtisnjene vzorčne strukture na ozadju vzpostavljajo harmonično vizualno ugodje, ki odzvanja želji po simetriji telesa in duha in nevtralizaciji konflikta. V ornamentu so nasprotja utišana: gibanje je uravnoteženo z mirovanjem, ljubkost s trdnostjo, kompleksnost z jasnostjo, intuicija in spontanost z redom. Vzpostavljena likovna atmosfera prostora ustvarja kuliso za razpoloženjsko in psihološko doživljanje figure, ki je vključena v svoje okolje, kot da je le-to pozunanjenje njenega notranjega sveta.
Figure so brez prave ozemljitve, podobne stanju levitacije, kot bi bivale v območju uma, ki deluje v sanjskem svetu, v katerem se prostor in čas mislita povsem drugače in kjer se spomini, vsakdanji dogodki, misli in skrite emocije pretakajo brez cenzure in razbremenjeni rutinirane instrumentalne naravnanosti. Na teh slikah sta imaginarno in realno v korelaciji in simbiozi, ne da bi pri tem zdrsnila v konkretnost prepoznanja ali v razkritje prikritega.
Ključnega pomena so mesta, ki uhajajo prepoznavi. Tu ne govorimo le o praznih obrazih, slikovni palimpsestnosti kot igri zakritega in odkritega in zabrisanih mestih na nekaterih delih slike, ki nakazuje na oddaljenost in zastrto predstavo, kakršno generirajo spominske podobe. Na nekaterih slikah se pojavi nekaj bolj nenavadnega: nesmiseln madež, amorfna, krhka in eterična snov, kot bi se razblinjala v fazi sublimacije. Ta nepričakovan detajl ob figuri, vrinek, ki nekako ne sodi zraven je v vlogi neznanke in ravno zato opazovalko/opazovalca še posebej pritegne k podobi. Vpisan je namreč v samo sliko, istočasno pa je pomensko zunaj nje. V lacanovski optiki bi ga lahko opredelili kot vizualizacijo slepe pege v podobi, ki zaznamuje vpis subjekta vanjo, a je za ta isti pogled nevidna.
Reprezentacije ženskega telesa na slikah Ane Sluga niso samo nosilke osebnih in družbenih metafor, pač pa z vrzelmi, manjkajočimi členi v podobi, ki nadomeščajo predstavo, gradijo za podobo bistveno mentalno in predstavno dinamiko, saj preprečujejo razrešitev njenih implicitnih antagonizmov. Zanimivo je opazovati, kako te slike z igro med prikazanim in odsotnim priprejo vrata pogledu ravno toliko, da ga pripnejo z negotovostjo, ki poganja interpretacijo.
dr. Nadja Gnamuš

1 Jacques Lacan, Etika psihoanalize, Ljubljana: Delavska enotnost, 1988, str. 18.
2 O parcialnosti videnja, ki ga v odnosu do realnosti proizvaja filmska slika, je pisal Pascal Bonitzer v knjigi Slepo polje, Ljubljana: SH, 1985, str. 72