Lana Mesić - Joy in Both Demystifying and Remystifying

In Čov(j)eče, ne ljuti se!, Lana Mesić explores reconciliation, memory, and collective action through an unexpected medium: 18,245 hand-painted game pawns. What began as a search for forgiveness in post-genocide Rwanda evolved into a deeply personal and political meditation on the unresolved tensions of the former Yugoslavia. Through play, ritual, and participation, the work invites viewers to imagine new forms of unity, rooted not in nostalgia, but in shared creation.

ABOUT THE PROJECT “ČOV(J)EČE, NE LJUTI SE!”

• Can you describe the moment when the idea for this work first came to you?

I think ideas like this form gradually; there is rarely a single “aha” moment. For me, it went something like this:

The first seed was planted back in 2014, when I was working on the Anatomy of Forgiveness project in Rwanda. I photographed reconciliation—or attempts at it—between Hutus and Tutsis. It had been a wish of mine to show this work in the former Yugoslav region, and I got the opportunity at the Organ Vida festival in Zagreb.

Right before the opening, my grandmother, quite worriedly, turned to me and said, “Ah, child, I hope everything goes all right. And how is it that they are able to reconcile there, while here tensions never seem to ease up?” That really stuck with me.

So my initial aim was to look for reconciliation in the ex-Yugo region, and I tried! But I couldn’t quite find it, which was sad but also a reality I had to face. I realized I needed to reflect on what I was really searching for and why

• How did your experience in Rwanda shape the direction of this project?

Being in Rwanda was surreal and deeply moving. I remember meeting two women, both named Francine and same age as me, who had hidden during the conflict. At the same time, I had been hiding in bomb shelters across the globe. There was a strange sense of connection, as if we had gone through it together, yet apart.

Visiting the genocide memorial in Butare was another powerful moment. On the final floor, I came face to face with Srebrenica and the men responsible. It floored me. Until then, I had kept art and life somewhat separate, but that moment blurred everything.

Still, there was beauty in meeting the Francines and witnessing attempts at reconciliation. It was then I realized I would have to explore reconciliation back “home,” though I didn’t yet know what form that search would take.

• Why did you choose to use figurines from the game Čovječe, ne ljuti se?

There are several reasons. First, I was in a bit of a photography crisis, asking myself what it really means to hang a photo on a wall. Can it do more, move people, make them think or feel?

At the time, I was working with everyday objects that I sculpted and photographed, but gradually I let the objects stand on their own. The material became essential. For example, in my previous project I made everything out of matches. Inspired by Bruce Nauman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, I wanted to provoke a strong reaction. And it worked. People would walk into my studio and immediately ask, “When will you light them on fire?”

During COVID, my aunt sent me a meme of people in hazmat suits with the caption, “Look at our guys in their gear, same as Čovječe ne ljuti se.” I loved the absurdity of it, and somewhere along the way I realized that the pawns would make perfect “pixels” for this work.

The symbolism of the game, even its name Čovječe ne ljuti se (“Man, don’t get angry”), felt like a direct echo of politics. The roll of the dice, the arbitrary fate of the pawns, and the idea that you are supposed to accept it without complaint. That’s what conflict feels like to me. Winners and losers are declared in an almost random way, while everything that is lost and destroyed is overlooked. The only way to cope is with humor. In the end, everyone kind of lost anyway. But the humor, and the collective aspect of the work, keeps it from being a total bummer. At least, I hope so.

• How did you interpret them in the context of reconciliation and political tensions?

In my research I spent a lot of time looking into the history of Yugoslavia, past and present. I watched archival footage of Dan Mladosti (The Day of Youth), when Tito’s birthday was celebrated. Children, the Pioniri, formed living slogans and shapes with their bodies: flowers, emblems, symbols of unity. There was also the Štafeta Mladosti, a baton carried across the country by young people. The message was simple: alone you can’t do much, but together, if you cooperate, you can do anything. It was naive, maybe, but also beautiful. And despite everything that came after, I still believe in those values.

In a way, I wanted to bring that spirit back into my work. Not in a Yugo-nostalgic sense, but to show what becomes possible when you shift perspective. When you take power back from dogmas and simply come together. In this project, the people who build the image are the image. That’s a quiet but important shift.

Around that table, people from all over the former Yugoslavia sat together and built the image. There were no political tensions, just people, side by side, creating something. It was meditative and soothing, and it felt like the reconciliation I had been searching for. Maybe it’s only a gesture, but I believe small gestures can carry real weight. Whatever politicians may have broken, reconciliation can still live in the next generations.

• What are some key symbols or elements in the installation that stand out to you?

The pawns are the biggest one, all 18,245 of them! What I love is that you can’t immediately see the image. Each pawn is a pixel. People come close to see what the piece is made of, but then they can’t see the full picture. They step back and then it starts making sense.

That’s kind of how historic events work, isn’t it? When you’re in the middle of something, it’s hard to make sense of it. Only with distance, in space or time, can things become clear. But the tricky part is: who gets to write that history? Who decides which images we remember?

• Can you describe your performance? What it looks like and what it involves?

The work involves 18,245 pawns, all of them hand-painted by me. Each pawn was assigned a code: there were twelve colours in total, and together with a very talented friend (basically a wizard in these things), I created a kind of paint-by-numbers guide. Every pawn had its designated place. They were placed into ten large MDF boards, CNC-cut with precise holes so the pawns would fit snugly.

But here’s the most important part: I didn’t assemble it myself. Since I wanted to democratise the image and “give it back to the people” (and also to nod, in a way, to the old idea of brotherhood and unity) I invited others to build it. Through an open call, people from the ex-Yugoslav diaspora in the Netherlands came together. Over the course of two days, they placed every single pawn into position (well, mostly in the right spots, haha). The whole process was filmed from above.

It became something meditative, almost ritualistic: slowly building the image of the peace treaty together. We ate ćevapčići, listened to ex-Yugo rock, and worked side by side. It was surreal, and also very beautiful.

• How does the audience respond to your work?

I think, or at least I like to believe, it’s equal parts wonder and equal parts “Are you insane?”

The reactions tend to unfold in stages, almost like a rocket launch. First comes disbelief: “Wait… 18,245 pawns!?” Then curiosity: I explain that it’s the Peace Agreement signed in the aftermath of the Bosnian War, built by people from across different ex-Yugo backgrounds. And then comes the pause, the moment when it clicks. That’s when I see this mix in their faces: wonder, warmth, and also a bit of sadness. It’s a strange cocktail of feelings, but I like to believe it’s the right one.

I’ve always said I’m too softhearted for politics. The only way I can approach activism is like this: with softness, with play, with colour, with gestures that invite rather than confront. There’s a lot of warmth woven into the project, and my hope — and what I often sense — is that the audience feels held by that warmth, even as they sit with the weight of the history it carries.

• What role does the idea of play have here, as a part of the concept you’re creating?

I’ve always been fascinated by how much football resembles war. In its language, symbolism, and emotional stakes. George Orwell famously said that football is war minus the shooting. That line stayed with me.

It made me start wondering if games could also promote cooperation, instead of just competition. What happens when we frame diplomacy as a game? What kind of play leads to collaboration? And what does it mean when a game never really ends?

There’s another quote I return to often, from Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens:

“We must conclude, therefore, that civilization, in its earliest phases, was played. It does not emerge from play as a baby detaches itself from the womb; rather, it arises within and through play, and never fully separates from it.”

That idea resonates deeply with me. I believe that play allows us to access things we might not be able to reach in everyday life. It interrupts the usual routines and opens space for imagination. It helps us imagine something different, something better. And that is so important. Because sometimes life is hard, and we feel defeated, like nothing we do matters. But play offers an antidote to that feeling. It reminds us that other ways of being are possible.

• Who or what was your biggest inspiration throughout the process?

One of my biggest inspirations throughout this process was Francis Alÿs, especially his project When Faith Moves Mountains and other works where people come together to do something seemingly impossible or absurd. In his practice, the performative act is not just about the outcome but about what it means to the people doing it. There is a quiet poetry in that. A kind of softness that carries strength. It stays with you.

I am usually not a big fan of abstract art, but Bruce Nauman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue comes to mind simply because of how strongly people reacted to it. The piece stirred such intense emotions that some viewers complained, and one even slashed it with a knife. Whether they loved it or hated it, the fact that it made them feel something so deeply is what stayed with me. That, to me, is powerful. That is also what I hope to do. To create experiences that awaken something in people. A moment of childlike awe and/or shared effort.

Last but not least, I have to mention Ai Weiwei, especially his work Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds). The installation consists of millions of individually handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds, spread across a wide space. I am fascinated by how the work transforms something seemingly small into a powerful collective statement. His ability to combine meticulous craftsmanship with poetic and symbolic meaning, while engaging audiences beyond the gallery, is something I am always striving to reach in my own practice.

• Is there a character or narrative within the work that feels especially important to you?

The work depicts the Dayton Peace Agreement, and most people will immediately recognise the main players: the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia. What struck me from the beginning was the sheer absurdity of it all. A handful of old men sitting around a table, signing a piece of paper, while Bill Clinton, fresh from a sex scandal, and Jacques Chirac hovered over their shoulders.

I even heard a story (from someone who worked in presidential security, so take it as rumor) that Tudjman and Milošević (visibly drunk) were in great spirits, laughing together, while treating Izetbegović with open hostility. At one point, Milošević supposedly slapped him on the back and said, “Don’t worry, be happy”, which was a hit song at the time. It’s grotesque and surreal all at once.

And then, as if the scene weren’t already absurd enough, the original treaty itself went missing. Disappeared. A new authorised copy was made, which was never even translated into the languages of the region. Later, a man from a village near Sarajevo literally stole it and tried to sell it for fifty thousand Deutsche Marks. That alone feels like a film script waiting to be made and hopefully one day I get to tell that story on screen.

But with this work, my intention wasn’t to simply re-stage that theatre of politics. I wanted to flip the spotlight away from the leaders, away from the caricature of power. For me, the real narrative is about the so-called pawns, the ordinary people, who have the potential to rewrite the story. All over the world, we’ve seen what can happen when people come together. Demonstrations still remain one of the most powerful tools against oppressive, corrupt governments. When people unite, anything can happen, especially when they’re fighting the good fight.

That, to me, is what really matters. And that’s what I tried to capture with this work, even if only in a small way.

ON ARTISTIC APPROACH AND DEVELOPMENT

• How did your shift away from photography as your main medium happen?

At the heart of my practice lies a fascination with the invisible, the forces that shape our lives but resist direct representation. Growing up, I absorbed a sense of wonder from bedtime stories about the mysteries of the world (which my mother would read to me, haha). At the same time, I witnessed the disappearance of Yugoslavia, the country where I was born, as borders and nations changed almost overnight. That combination of awe and dislocation left me curious about how we give shape to things we cannot see.

As a documentary photographer, I kept asking: what do these invisible powers look like? The more I searched, the clearer it became that they could not be captured directly with a camera. They had to be approached differently. The shift in my approach is first clearly visible in Souls, Ties and a Pile of Carrots. There I investigated the failures of the 2008 economic crisis, asking bankers seemingly naive questions about the system they worked within. I then translated the amount of time they gave me in interviews into the time I literally invested in cross-stitching their portraits. The longer the conversation, the sharper the portrait became, mimicking economic value. Cross-stitch is traditionally a female craft in which women passed down skills and values to their daughters. In this context each stitch became a pixel, again representing value but in a very different way.

Since then, I have continued to seek materials with symbolic weight, always rooted in a photographic way of thinking but no longer bound by the camera.

• What do installation and performance allow you to express that photography didn’t?

I am fascinated by things that do not have an image and yet govern our lives. How wondrous it is to be human, to believe in and act upon concepts that are essentially invisible. We like to think we live in a rational world, but many of the forces that shape us are nebulous at best. Installation and performance allow me to explore exactly this tension. There is a joy in both demystifying and remystifying, taking something as dry as banking or the politics of conflict and finding wonder in it, and then giving that sense of wonder back to others.

For example, in Heist Reversed I dumped 15,000 pennies next to Regent’s Canal in London and filmed what happened. The video went viral almost immediately. People’s reactions to the pile of pennies were full of curiosity and delight: one man even showered himself in the coins, like a real-life Dagobert Duck. I was interested in how people interact with money, a force that has become increasingly abstract and intangible. Next to this video, I also photographed the pennies, building three huge towers from the pile, but no photograph could capture the sense of wonder of that live moment, of people stumbling upon a random heap of money in the city.

In that sense, installation and performance give me the space to circumvent our desensitization to images. In today’s fast-moving visual culture, flooded with images, it takes new strategies to cut through and touch people. These formats let me create situations where wonder can still be felt, shared, and experienced together.

• How would you describe your transition into a more interdisciplinary approach?

Like with most good art, my transition happened through a lot of trial and error. I often found myself fabulously failing, and then finding my way out of self-imposed problems. I was never really a purist documentary photographer; I was always looking for different strategies to tease out the invisible.

It all started in my graduation work Clever Eyes, where I devised photographic experiments that asking the question “What do invisible things look like? They were all quite whimsical. For example, I worked with a police sketch artist to create a composite portrait of God, using all the paintings of God I could find. I then printed it as a wanted poster asking, “Have you seen this person?”. The people that I found I then photographed and they, for all sense and purposes, became god.

More recently, I created an image out of matches depicting Milodrag Zdravković, the TV presenter who had to tell the Yugoslav people that Tito had died. That match piece caught fire by accident in my studio, long story (laughter), but after the fire was extinguished, I realized it had left a perfect print on my linoleum studio floor. The fire itself had made a photographic image, which felt like the perfect embodiment of what that work was about (the looming dangers of rampant nationalism).

Even now, I often depend on these magnificent failures, learning to develop a nose for them before they become too dangerous. Over time, I realized that these experiments do not always need the camera as an overarching support. They can stand on their own, and that was the real shift into a more interdisciplinary practice.

• How important is the physical presence of the audience compared to documentation?

It is everything. Like in quantum physics, although I say this with the confidence of someone who barely passed high school math, the observer changes the outcome. I genuinely do not think my work exists without the audience. Or at least, not fully.

There is something about having real bodies in a space, breathing the same air, reacting in real time. That shared presence gives the work its charge. It is not just about looking at something, but about being with something. Participating. Feeling it. Smelling the ćevapčići, hearing the ex-Yugo rock, standing beside someone else who is quietly feeling something too.

Documentation is fine. Of course I document the work. I am not reckless. But honestly, a photo or video will never fully capture the energy of people coming together to build something, to play, to remember, or to imagine something better. That part is alive. That part is sacred. That part needs an audience.

So yes. Without people, it is just a lot of pawns in a room. With people, it becomes something else entirely.

• Do you have any artistic influences or references that inspired this project?

I’ve already mentioned Francis Alÿs and Ai Weiwei. Next to them, I’ve been very inspired by Walid Raad, especially his Atlas Group project, which explores historical narratives and blurs the line between fiction and reality. His approach offered me a framework for thinking about how games can carry symbolic weight in conflict and reconciliation. Likewise, Beatriz González’s exploration of violence and reconciliation through empathetic gestures has been important for me, as she shows how art can create nuanced contemplations around the difficult subjects of healing and diplomacy.

BROADER QUESTIONS ABOUT ART AND SOCIETY

• What does the phrase “Plan the action, not the outcome” mean to you?

Politics, in the conventional sense, more often than not stress me out. But of course, I live in a society, in a world, and I feel a responsibility to contribute in a way that fits who I am. I know my strengths and my limits. I’m a bit introverted, a bit of an anxious type, so I had to ask myself: how can you engage with the world, be an activist even, from a place of wonder and joy and also without burning out?

That’s where this phrase comes in. I can’t plan “make the world a better place” that’s an outcome. But I can plan an action: above all to be kind, to bring people together to do something meaningful, playful, or thought-provoking. That’s within my control. The rest unfolds on its own.

• How do you see the role of art in processes of social reconciliation?

Art won’t change the entire world but it might change someone’s world. And that’s a world. I believe in soft gestures. In showing up for hope. In doing things together, in humor, the absurd, in wonder. In zooming in and zooming out. In offering a different angle, in being kind, in coming together. In being an antidote to the right-wing nonsense. In pointing out what’s wrong, but also showing how things could be.

Above all, I believe that small things can move big things.

• What can art offer when politics fails?

Perspective.

• What themes are currently most important to you, outside of this project?

An ongoing theme in my work is the mind’s constant struggle to confront that which does not have an image.

As a child, while others drifted into sleep with nursery rhymes, I was lulled by the strange and arcane, mysterious artifacts, cryptic phenomena, and the unexplainable wonders of the world. My mother’s bedtime readings of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysteries of the World left me with a lasting belief that the universe is vast, magical, and unfathomably strange. This sense of wonder was deepened by my experience of being born in a country that no longer exists, Yugoslavia, which vanished into thin air like Atlantis. Whole nations can disappear and reappear, just like that, by signing some magical papers. Their borders as slippery as snakes.

Each new migration meant adapting to cultures that often felt like an ill-fitting suit, they served their purpose, but there was always something itching beneath the surface.

It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that I’m fascinated by our human ability to think about things that don’t have an image and then to go looking for precisely those images. From spirits to quantum physics, or even our own emotions, we keep trying to give form to the intangible. Because when we see something, we can understand it better. And I think my artistic practice is a continuous attempt to understand things better but also, paradoxically, to leave room for wonder.

• Do you have any advice for young artists starting their career?

Five things.

1. Be incredibly curious.

Everything becomes interesting if you zoom in far enough. Even doorknobs. Especially doorknobs. Let your brain wander and follow the weird stuff. Curiosity is your best tool.

2. Fail.

Fail hard and often. In every single project I’ve done, there’s been a moment where I thought, well, that’s it, this is a disaster. But almost every time, that so-called failure came right before a breakthrough. So lean into it. Get excited when things go wrong. It probably means something good is about to happen.

3. Enjoy the process.

Ignore the accolades and the bad reviews alike. If you find the thing that gets you into that flow state, where time melts and the rest of the world disappears, that’s your gold. Protect it. That part is yours.

4. Apply to everything.

Open calls, residencies, grants, the weird little things that seem like long shots. Apply anyway. Even if you don’t get in, someone might remember your work. You never know who’s watching.

5. Get an accountant.

Seriously. Most artists are terrible at this because of how our brains are wired. Also, nobody teaches us this stuff. Just outsource it. Save your brain for the good stuff.

Bonus:

Never forget: duct tape is an art supply.

Author: Hana Tiro