Croatia 2026

Title: Compelled by Fright and Beauty
Commissioner: Ministry of Culture and Media
Curator: Branko Franceschi
Exhibitor: Dubravka Lošić

“Compelled by Fright and Beauty” is a site-specific installation by Dubravka Lošić that presents updated cycles from her four-decade career. These cycles function as open systems for formal expansion and experimentation, adapted to the spatial and semantic connotations of the exhibition site. Lošić’s artistic language converges modernist, postmodern, and neo-avant-garde paradigms with local and traditional influences, creating a space for improvisation at formal boundaries.

The work is rooted in a local understanding of freedom and independence as forms of beauty, a sentiment intensified by contemporary global conflicts. Drawing on the cultural heritage of Dubrovnik and a family tradition of textile manufacturing, the cycles transform trauma into aesthetic content. This approach affirms autochthonous culture as a counterpoint to dominant cultural production, moving away from didactic narration to focus on the sensory and affective roles of art.