ARTIST STATEMENT | ARGONAUTA

ARTIST STATEMENT (short version)

Matea Šabić Sabljić, artist name Argonauta, is a transdisciplinary visual artist, researcher, and boat builder. Through the long-term authorial project BRODI/ONA, she reconstructs the invisible histories of women in maritime culture by building a fleet of small boats with her own hands. She builds them in honor of women who, despite bans and prejudice, built ships, sailed the seas, and explored the marine world—yet whose stories remained unseen. The boats are made from recycled materials, using both traditional and contemporary techniques, merging craft, ecology, feminist historiography, and cultural intervention to create spaces between the visible and the invisible, the personal and the collective, the local and the universal.

Each boat bears the name of a real woman—navigator, captain, shipbuilder, pirate, marine biologist, engineer, naval architect, sailor, or officer—whose story was suppressed but not lost. BRODI/ONA is simultaneously an archive, ritual, installation, and an act of presence, resistance, and memory-making through body, tool, and space. Beyond BRODI/ONA, her practice interrogates the very notion of work—especially the invisible labor of women and women artists—continuously developing a body of works, interventions, performances, installations, and artistic actions across different disciplines and forms. Through these, she explores maritime tradition and invisible labor, reshaping, questioning, researching, and reinterpreting our understanding of history and social roles.

ARTIST STATEMENT (long version)

Matea Šabić Sabljić

aka Argonauta

transdisciplinary visual artist

Matea Šabić Sabljić, born on December 7, 1982, in Split, grew up in Trogir, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (2012, Department of Animated Film and New Media), currently lives in Zagreb, Croatia. Member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists Dubrovnik – HDLUDU. Exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in Croatia and abroad. Selected exhibitions

Through my artistic practice—through research, intervening into history, through the process of building the fleet of boats “BRODI/ONA” ( SHE/SHIPS ), through spatial installations, and performative elements—I present a parallel history and presence of women at sea. I reshape, question, explore, and reinterpret our understanding of history and social roles.

I construct a fleet of boats with my own hands, and intervene in Maritime Museums with short biographies of maritime heroines, shedding light on parallel, invisible, and often overlooked narratives. I compose a cartography of invisible biographies of real women, inviting the audience on a journey where they uncover true stories and contribute with new examples—becoming active participants in bringing voices from the past into the present, for the future.

For many years, I have been exploring the “place of” women in the maritime world. Since 2018, I have been creating and building the fleet BRODI/ONA ( SHE/SHIPS ) in my studio RADI/ONA ( literal translation is SHE/WORKS meaning WORKSHOP ), building a functional artistic installation honoring maritime heroines. This fleet not only asks, “Is there place for women in the maritime world?” but also, through artistic gesture, decisions, organization, and manual work, is building a parallel world > word > story > history >> her story ; a redefined maritime world.

Also, through my artistic work I question the very concept of work, especially the invisible work of women of the seas and female artists, I continuously develop performative actions and installations, exploring themes of maritime tradition and women’s invisible work—reshaping, questioning, researching, and reinterpreting historical and societal roles.

As a visual transdisciplinary artist, I work at the intersection of maritime heritage, feminist historiography, ecology, environmental awareness, site-specific, performative, and installation art. In my practice I merge boat-building, storytelling, installation art and performative actions, transforming forgotten or invisible histories into living experiences. Through interactive interventions, I challenge traditional museum narratives, reconstructing the hidden legacy of women in maritime history and reinterpreting the cultural memory of the sea.

Navigating between art, history, craft, old and new media, techniques and technologies, creating a parallel history—physically manifesting untold stories of woman sailors, shipbuilders, explorers, and marine scientists, the boats I build are navigable installations, each honoring a specific woman from maritime history—forming a parallel fleet that sails between past and future, as tribute to the women who dared to sail beyond the horizon, build ships with bare hands, carry oceans across montains, launch forests over deserts... explore the invisible, rewrite history, reclaim futures, and rise like tides...

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For many years, I've been researching the “place” of women in the maritime and marine world. Through personal experience—first by learning, maintaining, and repairing a traditional wooden boat (leut) from 2009 to 2019, and exploring who were the women who although “invisible” have participated in maritime history ( which results with interventions in maritime museums) and building my own “utopian” fleet of boats - the “BRODI/ONA” (SHE/SHIPS) fleet, (which results with performative actions of launching and naming each newly built boat in honor to a remarkable woman from maritime history), this way illuminating lives of women who, through history till today, with their exploration, navigation, engineering, activism, and artistic endeavors, have shaped better seas and futures.

Since 2018, Independently, with my own hands and resources, I have been building a fleet of boats “BRODI/ONA” (SHE/SHIPS) as functional, mobile, interactive installation, honoring maritime heroines who, despite societal barriers, prohibitions and prejudice, have built ships, sailed the seas, and explored the marine world.;

From pirate queens and woman sailors, pirates and shipbuilders who since the time before the new era often have disguised themselves as men, due to the widespread belief that “a woman is misfortune on a ship”, all untill 20th century pioneers who have circumnavigated the planet by themselves, took part in sport races, welded ships during world wars, fought for education and employment rights in technical fields.., as engineers and educated naval architects have constructed and designed ships, as educated captains and marine officers run the ships and sailed the seas, as educated scientists have participated in founding of marine science, explorations and mapping of the oceans, as activists advocated for the preservation and saving of marine life; thus contributing to pushing of boundaries and establishing equality.

My artistic research – who were the woman that have participated in maritime world from history till today, I've been exhibiting since 2021. as Interventions in the maritime history through Maritime museums, so that by following official maritime history could be also read and parallel - unofficial maritime woman history, that was also present but not visible, and whose testimonies were often preserved only in newspaper articles or published memoirs. Continuing on the academic work of Hanna Hagmark-Cooper from the Åland Maritime Museum in Finland—“Is there place for women in maritime history?”—I also pose the question: “Is there place for women in maritime history?”.

Intervention into Maritime museums in the medium of museum labels with short biographical notes from women in maritime history till today, are camouflaged as museum artifacts, redefining permanent display—not showing an official maritime history, but an intervention - an attempt to “make space” for women into history, highlighting the significance of their actions and making their presence visible. I build my boats mostly from recycled wood, protected with epoxy resin, and powered by the synergy of human and nature—using paddles and sails, ecologically, without disturbing the environment with noise or engines, fully immersed in the landscape. They are functional and seaworthy, 4.5 meters long, with two masts and burgundy sails. The work is processual, from an idea and intention in 2010 as a response to the experience of owning and maintaining a wooden boat— a response on the provocation of one master, where one broom actually provoked me to build a boat by myself, actually to build whole fleet of boats, completely independently, in honor of maritime heroines... till establishing the possibilities in terms of acquiring knowledge, studio space, working conditions and tools.

Since 2018, I have been building the BRODI/ONA fleet in my studio RADI/ONA in the heart of Zagreb, on the thin line between art and craft. I create and build a functional artistic installation—a fleet dedicated to maritime heroines—that not only asks “Is there place for women in the maritime world?” but also, through artistic gesture, decision, organization, and manual work, is building a parallel world > word > story > history >> her story ; a redefined maritime world.

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"IZMEĐU GOVORA" / FRANCUSKI INSTITUT, SAMOSTALNA IZLOŽBA ZAGREB, 2012. / NIZ INTERVENCIJA U IZLOZIMA U CENTRU GRADA ZAGREBA, 2012. / ARTIKULACIJE, GALERIJA VN, zagreb, 2010.

Matea ŠabiĆ SabljiĆ

a k a A R G O N A U T A

TRANSDISCIPLINARY VISUAL artist

south

A T E L I E R

SLAVA'S SHIPYARD

& LADIES OF THE SEAS

Trogir, Matije Gupca 6

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north

A T E L I E R

RADI/ONA flotu BRODI/ONA

* SHE/WORKS SHE/FLEET

Zagreb, Palmotićeva 49​​

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S H O P

RADI/ONA * SHE/WORKS

Design, Craft & Art studio

Zagreb, Pavla Radića 37

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M A T E A Š A B I Ć S A B LJ I Ć

a k a A R G O N A U T A

transdisciplinary visual artist

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www.argonauta.art argonauta@argonauta.art www.LadiesoftheSeas.com argonauta@ladiesoftheseas.com

T. +385995107580 |

Argo Nauta _argo_nauta

"IZMEĐU GOVORA"

/ FRANCUSKI INSTITUT, SAMOSTALNA IZLOŽBA ZAGREB, 2012.

/ NIZ INTERVENCIJA U IZLOZIMA U CENTRU GRADA ZAGREBA, 2012.

/ ARTIKULACIJE, GALERIJA VN, zagreb, 2010.

Zagreb, Palmotićeva 49

www.argonauta.art
argonauta@argonauta.art
www.LadiesoftheSeas.com argonauta@ladiesoftheseas.com