Missing Children
Sadko Hadzihasanovic
Dates Showing: August 30th - September 19th, 2003
Established Bosnian-Canadian artis Sadko Hadzihasanovic's recent work employs portraiture to investigate the reality of children as victims threatened in contemporary society, in particular regions of war. Hadzihasanovic considers child criminals as objects of pity in contemporary culture. "I became aware of the crimes committed by children when I moved to Noth American. Child murderers, a reality in American schools and homes appeared to me as objects of pity rather then monsters. As a product of our aggressive culture, the are victims in their own right."
Missing Children is inspired by these views and by the mass mediated visual invasion of missing children images found on milk cartons, super market panels, public transportation, display boards and television. In response to original photographs of the children he decided to pair those appropriated images with computer-aided aged images of the children. The result is a diptych: two canvases, one black, featuring the image of the child from the missing persons date; the other canvas white with his own digitally altered vision of the aged child that embodies a belief that the child is alive and not necessarily discontent.
Hadzihasanovic is interested in exploring issues of loss and hope simultaneiously through the creation of these portraits. The portraits fill up the gallery space as an elegy for the missing children that have found their way in to the Hadzihasanovic artistic conciousness.
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