Dear Empathy,...

2024

exhibited & performed at:

DOBRODOŠLI! WELCOME! स्वागत है! स्वागत छ! MALIGAYANG PAGDATING!

July 2025
@Croatian Designers Association ; Zagreb, RH
| Solo Exhibition

LCC Design Degree Show
December 2024
@London College of Communication ; London, UK
| Exhibiting artist

Dear Empathy… is a performance-research based project that examines the role of empathy in navigating socially involved art projects, focusing specifically on the migrant labor landscape of Croatia. Told from the perspective of a clerk in the Undelivered Mail Department, the performance reveals stories from love letters and breakup letters written by migrant workers to the countries in which they work or have worked. Rather than just highlighting the letters themselves as documents, the performance is focused on the emotional weight they carry. The post office lady, through her own experience of handling these letters, invites the audience to connect with them. Unable to proceed as instructed and destroy the letters, the post office lady searches for a more meaningful way to honor these stories and act. She decides to distribute the letters between their different writers, but feels as though that is still not enough. In the final act, moved by her emotions, she decides to write a letter herself - to Empathy.

Cvjetanović, B. (2025) Croatian Designers Association - Performance 1-4 [Photograph]

Upon the post office lady leaving the space, a remnant of the performance is left behind - a post office department, with clues for those seeking to explore. Translated letters, scrunched letter addressed to government, a letter to Empathy... What happened here? Dear Empathy,… invites the audience to search for different ways of connecting and imagines new approaches to empathy. In the end, the post office lady’s attempts are not in vain as she hands out the letter to each audience member, making them now postal workers themselves, holding a letter addressed to Empathy. The question then becomes: how will they take the letter and its message into their own world? This project originated from research exploring the actors of Croatia’s labor landscape and ways in which small narratives of resilience could be built across different groups. The letters featured in the performance are based on real love and breakup letters written by both migrant workers arriving in Croatia and Croatian workers migrating abroad.

Cvjetanović, B. (2025) Croatian Designers Association - Dead Letter Department 1-3 [Photograph]

me/ja

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