Sundance

“Sundance” is an experimental book project conceived by Natalija Ribovic. The artist has been working for two years in developing her project and she realized it in 2014 just before other people tried to launch the same idea onto the market. The empty white pages with the nineteen poems and its drawings contained in the book developed by the artist react to UV-light, i.e. it can be read only when the book is exposed to UV-light. On the contrary, the test is invisible and remains hidden. This effect has been obtained by using special paper, colors and a particular print technique. The symbolic role played by the sunlight in the combination of these factors has always fascinated artists and writers: the play of visibility and invisibility and the relevant impalpable phases similar to a continually modified work in the art. In Ribovic’s masterpiece the sun irradiation outlines first of all the color and then the material substance. Thereby, the artist created a metaphoric and a physic poetical connection without using any digital or electronic tricks or manipulations but only by using a simple and old mean. Her poems and artistic formulations are apparently in conflict with the intentions and the willingness of the project. So if you want to know more about it, you have to find out, see and read only at your own use. Written with invisible colors, visible in the sun. Ribovic developed many years ago all her cosmos characters and the resulting stories by means of classical drawings, performances and videos. “Sundance” is a surprising and new masterpiece as well as a fascinating and unusual artistic book which does not intend to be compared to flip-books nor to prestigious projects. But it only aims at awaking a dialog with the reader. (Thomas Elsen)