I Wish I Was Born In a Hollywood Movie

3-30-06 Maja Bajevic

Maja Bajevic was born in 1967 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now Bosnia/Herzegovina) but studied art in Paris, France. She was in Paris when the Bosnian War erupted in 1992. Her earlier artwork explored war and the effect it has on the people who live through it. She had originally planned to stay in Paris for 8 months, but ended up staying for 8 years as the war and its aftermath continued in her home country. in 2000 she returned to Sarajevo.

With "I Wish I Was Born in a Hollywood Movie" she moves away from politics and war to contrast the shiny face that Hollywood puts on locations with the reality that the people who live there actually have to deal with. she does this using a flash animation that gives the appearance of windows, both metaphorical as with a computer operating system, and literal, as we look through the windows from hollywood imagery into reality.

In a way this piece reminds me of my first trip to New Orleans in 1995. All you really saw of New Orleans on TV before that was either the Superdome for football games or a romanticized look at the garden district with its plantation homes or Bourbon street during Mardi Gras. When I got there I was shocked to see the reality was much grimier and run down than what media had led me to believe. Ah, the innocence of youth!