Zagreb Honors Vlasta Delimar with Performance Homage on Her 70th Birthday

Zagreb celebrated the 70th birthday of Vlasta Delimar, a pivotal Croatian and regional performance artist, with a "Hommage Vlasti Delimar" event that featured a "Night of Performance" across several city locations. The program brought together artists of different generations and artistic styles to reinterpret some of Delimar's most significant works through new performances.

The event began on Zrinjevac with a reinterpretation of Delimar's 1985 performance "Tied to a Tree" by Vlasta Žanić and collaborators. This piece addresses the vulnerability of hard-won women's rights amidst strengthening conservative and patriarchal tendencies.

In the Centar Kaptol's The One Piece Gallery, Argentinian transgender artist Maiamar Abrodos presented "The Right to Orgasm After 60," a new take on one of Delimar's most famous performances. Arijana Lekić-Fridrih continued the exploration with a performance referencing "Conversation with a Warrior or The Woman Is Gone," examining the invisible labor of care and maintenance often excluded from dominant historical narratives.

The evening program at the Zagreb Dance Center showcased two more performances inspired by Delimar's iconic works. Bruno Isaković reinterpreted "I Love Dick," questioning the relationships between desire, the body, and societal norms. Argentinian artist Lucia Giannoni's work, "We Must Trust Men," offered a contemporary perspective on questions of trust, authority, and gender relations.

The "Night of Performance" series aims to create a temporary space for intergenerational encounters, diverse artistic strategies, and embodied experiences. It opens up the enduring question of what it means to create art from and through the body, and how it can be both deeply personal and inevitably political.