Garaža Kamba

Phantom Pain represents a portrait of Zagreb, revealing its complex infrastructural layers and the state of a society through its strata—fragments of collective faces that, upon encountering a web of natural impulses beyond human control, fall and transform into creaking debris underfoot. Living in the city center and witnessing the ongoing reconstruction efforts after the earthquake, the artist observed numerous fragments of façade decorations scattered across the streets. Their otherwise unnoticed existence suddenly became weighty, transformative, and traumatic. The face of the exhibited object is one of these massive “en face” portrait stuccoes that ended up scattered on roads and cars—some shattered, some turned to dust, but ultimately, like other bricks, rubble, and dust, consigned to the growing layers of the city’s forgotten tissue at Jakuševec.

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