Born in 1962, Sarajevo. Lives in Düsseldorf.
In the video piece Isola Bella, a series of sequences interweave scenes, music and the statements of the residents of the Home for the Protection of Children and Youth in Pazarić near Sarajevo. The script of the film comes from the artist's intensive collaboration with the residents, who are at the same time the audience and the performers in the video.
Isola Bella (2007-08) is the last in a sequence of Dakić's projects that take historic wallpaper designs as a starting point and involve collaboration with marginalised social groups. The background of the work is the 19th-century wallpaper design of the same name that evokes an ideal uninhabited island or Garden of Eden. Isola Bella becomes the stage, in contrast to the social reality and isolation of the residents, left alone on a different kind of island. Founded in 1949, as the first institution for the mentally handicapped in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the home was an example of socialism's modernisation. Although the primary function of the Home is to address the needs of children and young adults, most of the residents surviving the war from 1992-1996 are now older people who have spent their entire life within the confines of the institution.
Isola Bella is its own world, a self-contained phantasmagorical space in which personal histories and traumas, alongside illusions, desires, and an acceptance of the status quo are interwoven in a collage of staged interactions.
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