The first time I worked with Andreja Kulunčić was during the time I was director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Dubrovnik, back at the beginning of this century, on a project of French curator Catherine David called Dubrovnik Here and Elsewhere.

She had brought together young artists from all over the world (from, for example, Austria, Greece, France, Lebanon and Ecuador) who in their work were actively pondering on space and social life in various parts of the world. The task was to get to know and, on the basis of one’s own earlier experiences and manner of work, to think up a work that would have relevance to the local conditions. Andreja was the only representative of Croatia, but she already had behind her numerous important international actions and exhibitions (including an appearance at Documenta in Kassel), and this Dubrovnik project and the final exhibition of 2003 – particularly when one bears in mind the more than impressive list and importance of her works produced later on – were for her a minor episode, almost hardly worth mentioning.

But also this 'little' project enabled me to get an insight into her uniquely highly deliberated and composed manner of work. I was impressed by her ability in a very short time to take a snapshot of the setting, to make contact with the audience and the artists of the city (her theme was actually the Museum and its users, their perception of the status of art in the city and their affinities as against the contents being shown in the Museum), to interview a number of them, to form a team of local associates of various profiles (a master carpenter, a TV camera operator, a psychologist and a sociologist), to design for herself the equipment and furnishing necessary for the presentation of her work and to set up a symbolic library and organise the administration of a questionnaire. All this, with my modest assistance, while adapting herself to the limited production capacities and rationalising  to the utmost the time and the operations needed put on the operation in just a few days prior to the exhibition.

Andreja has shown, time after time, in various parts of the world, an ability rapidly to detect and then get into the essence of the social characteristics of a given space, and then quickly to form a network of associates to make possible the growth and continuity of the complex organism of a work, of its social penetration and real effectiveness, making people aware of and then making good the problems found. Often these have been projects requiring long-lasting, perhaps years-long, engagement, with groups of different profiles of people; works that necessitate the provocation and uncovering of the most powerful institutions in a state or a city (galleries, jails, councils and parliaments) in Hungary and Austria and Switzerland and so on. With the use of titles and contents that use paraphrase, irony and inversion, in projects that with their subversive charges denounce social anomalies (Bosnians Out!; 1 franc = 1 vote; Only for Austrians...) employing galleries and other public spaces as well as resources like lightboxes, railway station display panels, newspapers and other contemporary mass media, the Internet, social media and so on, the artist brings about a powerful diffusion of information, communicates over a wide area, enables real effectiveness, initiates social change.
Similar means and methods are used in the project Vrapče Pillows, the outcome of five years (!) of work with patients and staff of the Vrapče Clinic in Zagreb, as well as with outsourced consultants. The work on palliating the general repugnance felt towards mental illness unfolded in various forms, and finally took the shape of the making and distribution of pillows and cushions, acting as therapy for the patients themselves, as well as objects of and media for solidarity and an efficacious process of destigmatisation.
After the various early campaigns in which pillows were lent out, became the occasion for socialisation, group photography and the publication of the photos on Facebook, this gallery presentation, with a depiction of the events and media echoes to date, also includes a workshop in which, apart from experts, former patients take part and, if they want, people visiting the exhibition. The pillows can be bought, and the money obtained is used to help the patients. During the exhibition, there were several lectures and talks about the theme of mental problems and their treatment, and the whole event was once again amply covered in the media. And so this exhibition, with the ancillary events, took on the task of relaying the ideas and activities for the sake of destigmatisation that were started in 2010.

When in 2014 I planned this exhibition, I imagined it as a solo appearance by Andreja Kulunčić but in the meantime her name had gently faded into the background and had fitted into an authorial team of five leaders of the project, with a few other associates, while the patients of Vrapče were listed as pillow co-authors.
It is important to emphasise this fact, because it indicates the essential attributes of the character of the work, that is, the aspiration for real social and artistic activity. Traditional, individual artistic authorship withdrew into the background, the artist ego being suspended. It seems that to this artist the organisation, the effectiveness and the purpose of the project conceived are more important than being featured in her own person. The actual art in this case is retiringly mimicked to the benefit of the effectiveness of the social campaign and the desire for a change for the better. Thus in some public discussions and representations of the project, people in the media entirely overlooked its artistic initiative and genesis, but the author does not experience this fact as any drawback.
Also worth emphasising is the essential distinction of this striking and rich, globally present oeuvre from many works of what is called 'socially engaged' art that at first glance seem similar. Either deliberately or less deliberately, some with unconcealed premeditation of 'constructive' cruelty in a necrosadistic approach to the treatment of socially handicapped persons, and many without any bad intentions at the start, artists of this orientation take as their themes the wretchedness and pain of the contemporary world, in order to comply with the imperatives of certain contemporary trends or curatorial expectations or commissions and thus gain in personal visibility. These engaged authors treat the vulnerable groups, the victims of social segregations, of familial and belligerent and other circumstances as rewarding material, confirming and prolonging this status through their actions, all for the sake, they think, of their own personal salvation, their own good. But if a certain amount of compunction is included, if empathy is expressed for these subjects of artistic processing, the engagement with them is usually short-lived, one-off, and the victims remain more or less what and where they were, and the artists continue to exhibit their trophies in major or less major galleries around the world, building up their artistic and 'humanitarian' career.

The work of Andreja Kulunčić must in no way be confused with such cases. Apart from the mentioned self-effacement, her projects at the beginning take for granted the awareness of the dangers of an incautious approach. In this case, for example, the patients have been shielded from unnecessary and harmful exposure (that is, they were featured personally to the extent appropriate to their needs and affinities).
For the objective of attaining some indubitable positive effect and change, of those who suffer this social misfortune and of their immediate surroundings, the artist has in general avoided any surplus sentimentality and unnecessary lamentation. On the contrary, she uses means and values inherent in art: spirit, invention, criticism, absurdity, humour and irony. Indeed, she thinks up some constructive social entertainment mediated by the contemporary media via which she draws attention to the problems and provokes the desired reactions. We can recognise Andreja’s work as a continuation and contemporary version of the creation of social sculpture, the diffuse and comprehensive work that was announced by and in a particular way affirmed in the last century by Joseph Beuys. From this point of view, as already said, this artist understands her work as animating and setting in motion mechanisms that will enable the process of transformation, of social restoration to health. And when the prime mover for this or that reason is no longer present, by the induction and stimulation of the awareness and creativity of numerous associated participants and actors, the idea and the process should be able to survive as a self-sustaining drive mechanism.