Mirela Mišković-Treat

The proposed work tries to represent a monument celebrating play. Play is not the privilege of children alone; adults also play in their own ways. In their irresponsible way, adults thus jeopardize the children’s play. Consequences may be irreparable. Society that is built through such  jeopardizing of children’s play, at times deliberate one, would not create sound universes. Play is essential since it helps children to develop the sense of identity. While playing, children can see themselves in a different light and from different prospective. Play enables them to be both imaginative and realistic. It is one of the first ways of learning that enables everyone, both children and adults, to acquire knowledge that could help them – in any rational, effective and organized action – to reach their personal experience. Play is the rite of initiation and that is why it fits into reality so easily. In that reality, play can often assume negative character. It has always been a symbolic foundation of the overall cultural and social life of a society. It is through the sense of time and matter, i.e. toys that it can turn into something quite different. And, finally, I would only accentuate that. In essence, I have tried to transform the play that can be brutal and destructive and not only childlike, into the monuments celebrating toys, as well as remembering childhood denied or destroyed.

Project received for the competition for new monument/artwork in public space in the category “Objects and words”.