Group exhibition: “art & therapy”

Authors / Production

About this event

Featured artists:
Joko Bird (Joško Buljanović) • Alma Čače • Karin Grenc • Tisja Kljaković Braić • Josip Mijić • Marina Otchuda Say Gynt • Dražen Pejković

Inspired by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong’s “Art as Therapy,” this exhibition reimagines how we experience art – not through historical periods, but through emotions and personal growth. Instead of asking when something was created, we ask what it can do for us today.

Concept / Description

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The Mannequin Manifesto: The Boredom of Being Different, The Exhaustion of Being Seen

Through the works of “The Mascot” series, Marina Otchuda Say Gynt envisions a radical future where differences become “boring” and art is appreciated for its intrinsic value rather than the identity markers of its creator.

What happens when the art world’s hunger for diversity transforms artists into mannequins of difference? It means your trauma is inventory, your disability a design element, your identity a product to be consumed. Through digitally manipulated self-portraits transformed by AI, Marina Otchuda Say Gynt creates unsettling paper dolls that stare back at the viewer with her own eyes—eyes that refuse to look away, that challenge the comfortable narratives of tolerance and inclusion. This is not art that celebrates diversity. This is art that questions why we need to celebrate it at all.

“The Mascot” series was born from exhaustion—the exhaustion of being constantly asked to represent, to perform identity, to be the token voice in a well-meaning but ultimately hollow conversation. This series marks a refusal: a refusal to be comfortable, to be grateful, to be the diversity hire.

This new body of work operates as a visual polemic against “inclusive” collectives that, while well-intentioned, often create echo chambers that struggle to resonate beyond their immediate communities. The mascot does not celebrate diversity; it exposes the machinery that demands it. Otchuda Say Gynt argues for moving beyond tokenism toward a universal appreciation of art based on emotional resonance and human significance.

To quote Jean-Michel Basquiat: “I’m not a black painter, I use all kinds of colors in my paintings.” (Source: Basquiat, 1996, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115632)

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The Commodification Trilogy: About the Initial 3 Works

These three works are not about inclusion—they are about the violence of being included. The result is deeply unsettling: paper dolls with the artist’s focused gaze, shopping lists of prosthetic accessories, and figures standing proudly on pedestals of empty virtue. This is not a celebration. This is a wake-up call.

1. The Mascot beta v1.0

• Details: Digital Graphic / AI Hybrid (2025)
• Description: The foundational archetype of the series. This work introduces the “mascot”—an unsettling figure that serves as a canvas for society’s projection of “diversity.” While the body is graphically manipulated, the figure stares back with eyes that are unmistakably the artist’s own—intense and focused. This piercing, authentic gaze cuts through the digital layers from within the manipulated body of a wooden mannequin, challenging the viewer to find the human reality beneath the imposed label.

2. Shopping List for My Paper Doll

• Details: Digital Graphic / AI Hybrid (2025)
• Description: A stark, satirical composition featuring a portrait transformed by AI into a paper doll with one leg. Clad in a white dress with dark hair, the figure is accompanied by a surreal inventory of accessories: an obviously AI-imagined, seemingly uncomfortable yet fashionably “designer” prosthetic heel; a pink, gem-encrusted AI-imagined dildo; and colorfully designed wheelchairs. These items suggest a commodification of disability, where physical attributes and aids are checked off to satisfy institutional quotas for “inclusivity,” criticizing how the sector “shops” for difference.

3. Representing Proudly

• Details: Digital Graphic / AI Hybrid (2025)
• Description: In this piece, the mannequin figure adopts a posture of performative pride. It critiques the demand for marginalized artists to constantly “perform” their identity for an audience. The figure stands on a pedestal of hollow virtue signaling, embodying the exhaustion of being a “professional representative” rather than simply an artist.

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Series Statement

Otchuda Say Gynt crafts a visual critique of what she terms the “mascot of difference”—the way artists from marginalized communities are often reduced to tokens of diversity rather than being valued for their artistic merit. The works feature unsettling mannequin-like figures that embody the artist’s longing for a future where the need for such representation becomes obsolete.

“I hate inclusivity, tolerance, and being a mascot of the different. Let’s delete those words from all dictionaries,”states Otchuda Say Gynt in her accompanying essay, which serves as the theoretical foundation for this visual series.

The digital medium allows the artist to create what she describes as “stand-alone artworks independent of her own identity, transcending the constraints of her biography and physicality.” Each piece functions as both an individual statement and part of a larger conversation about authentic artistic expression versus performative representation.

“The Mascot” series will continue to expand, each new work peeling back another layer of the performative diversity apparatus. These works are available for exhibition and purchase, not as decorative objects, but as provocations meant to disrupt the comfortable narratives of inclusive spaces. This is art that bites the hand that pats it on the head.

The mascot dreams of a day when it can retire.

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Featured artists:
Joko Bird (Joško Buljanović) • Alma Čače • Karin Grenc • Tisja Kljaković Braić • Josip Mijić • Marina Otchuda Say Gynt • Dražen Pejković

Inspired by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong’s “Art as Therapy,” this exhibition reimagines how we experience art – not through historical periods, but through emotions and personal growth. Instead of asking when something was created, we ask what it can do for us today.