Zemlja

video/sound installation
UHD 2160p, PAL, color, 5.0 surround sound, 3’45” loop, 2024

Zemlja is a video work presented as an infinite loop, depicting a woman’s hand filled with earth. In the background, a flat, barren field stretches toward the horizon. The hand enters the frame and remains still as the earth slowly slips through the fingers, grain by grain, until the last particle falls away. Once emptied, the hand leaves the frame, and the action begins again. The cyclical interplay of image and sound transforms this simple gesture into a continuous repetition of loss.

The empty field becomes a space of both potential and absence—a fertile landscape without those who would cultivate it. Its flat horizon evokes, at once, the possibility of staying and the necessity of leaving.

The title, Zemlja, preserves the multiple meanings of the Croatian word, referring simultaneously to soil, country, and planet. This linguistic ambiguity forms the conceptual core of the work. Earth nourishes and provides a sense of belonging. It is the ground beneath our feet, the country we inhabit, and the planet we share. At the same time, it becomes a site of instability, shifting borders, and changing ownership, as well as a metaphor for a state that, rather than offering security, compels many to leave in search of a more dignified future. It slips through our fingers, elusive and impossible to hold, yet remains a foundation of identity and belonging.

The video was filmed in a rural plain marked by exceptionally fertile land and a prolonged process of depopulation. Abandoned villages and the departure of young families remain inscribed in the landscape as traces of the social, economic, and political transformations that shape the relationship between people and the land.

Within the endless loop, the earth continually disappears from the hand only to return to it once more. The cycle remains unresolved, reflecting the relationship between people and the land they inhabit, leave behind, and inevitably return to.

On-camera performance: Marta Pavičić
Location scouting and production coordination: Valentina Radoš