The Leap Of Faith, Singapore Biennale 2006

Ana Prvacki's interventions into daily life are derived to a large extent from her vivid imagination. She harnesses these inventive thoughts to create innovative and quirky means to transform the viewer's perception and experience of daily life and routine. Prvacki is the CEO of Ananatural, a semi-fictional company that specialises in supplying a wide variety of solutions to our daily problems, worries and fears, such as New Intellectual Concubine, in which the members of the public are able to engage Prvacki as an intellectual concubine, "to stimulate the daily exchange of ideas and to inspire unpredictable speculative brainstorming and mind-stretching." In addition to 'catalogues' in which these ideas and solutions are presented, they are sometimes also realised as part of exhibitions, such as Papain is in, in which Prvacki performed papaya facials for visitors to the ARCO art fair in Madrid. These ideas were also showcased in a recent solo exhibition, Ananatural's Wunderkamer at the Luxe Gallery in New York. In this exhibition, various aspects of her practice were on exhibition, ranging from Clouding Europe (instructional photographs), to drawings and wallpaper and fabrics derived from the Ananatural Incorporal Logo.

The Leap Of Faith, which Prvacki has realised for the Biennale will be the first artwork that will attract viewers to it, not in a metaphorical but rather in a completely literal and physical way. As the title suggests, the work involves viewers, dressed in specially designed metallic vests, being pulled physically towards a giant magnetic wall, engaging in a visible, visceral and humorous way, notions surrounding the belief in the power of art to engage and affect its viewers. The Leap Of Faith continues in the vein of Prvacki's works that re-examine aesthetic experience by privileging frivolity and humour as significant and overlooked attributes within the experience of art. In doing so, Prvacki's work re-evaluates the relationship of aesthetic experience to the experience of daily life in significant and interesting ways.

Eugene Tan, Curator SB2006