Dante Buu’s works reflect love, disobedience, intimacy and freedom. In his artistic practice as a performance artist, he uses his body and its emotional and physical transformations as the main medium. His extensive durational performances take the form of sculptures, installations, drawings, photography, prose poetry and hand-embroidery. Through his performative-embroidery works, he not only preserves craft traditions that are too often stigmatized as feminine and domestic but also creates spaces where people who feel “different” can meet and share their stories. His work serves as a powerful tool for healing and social cohesion, transforming handcraft into an artistic medium freed from preloaded social, political and traditional aesthetics and forms.
Dante Buu grew up in Rožaje, Montenegro, a country shaped by patriarchal and gendered structures that dominate both society and the art world. Embroidery was a central part of the traditional dowry in this region, mostly consisting of copy-paste motifs on the clothes and decorative pieces for the walls of bride’s new home. These works were often produced in a communal process by women and girls. These gatherings and the works created were part of a social practice that was shaped by political structures, in which women’s labour was strictly monitored and confined to the private sphere of the home.
Intuitive and deeply emotional, Dante Buu Embroidery is, for the most part, a practice of solitude. Over hours, months and years the artist creates fields of colour that witness the lives and existences of outcasts, dropouts, and misfits of all kinds. A dowry of the past, infused with the present of the artist’s life, from being an artist-at-risk in Berlin to representing Montenegro at the Venice Biennale in 2022 (just to be imposed with a work ban for almost two years by Montenegro’s Ministry of Culture), becomes a gift to the future and the art world.
Despite censorship and discrimination, Dante Buu remains committed to his role as an artist. For him, art is not only a path to personal recognition but a platform to initiate change and challenge artistic and societal norms—such as private vs. public, being good vs. being bad and breathing vs. suffocating.