Hannah Montana (Karlo Štefanek)

Growing up in Croatia, a country not yet part of the World, a child watches American pop stars, particularly Hannah Montana, whose name appears on almost everything imaginable: T-shirts, notebooks, bedsheets, lunchboxes, and objects with no conceivable relation to music. What fascinates the child is not only the pop star herself, but the possibility of becoming someone whose name could be reproduced endlessly, until it exists almost independently of the person behind it. Hannah Montana is, of course, Miley Stewart, a fictional teenager played by Miley Cyrus, whose own celebrity would eventually extend far beyond the character she portrayed. One persona conceals another, which is itself performed by someone whose public identity is no less carefully constructed. Somewhere within this succession of identities, the child begins to imagine his own.

Part of the ongoing self-portrait series Self-titled (2022–), the work borrows the visual language of pop-star merchandise, replacing the celebrity's name with that of the artist. Yet the name "Karlo Štefanek" belongs simultaneously to the person born with it and to the artistic persona constructed around it, continuing the same confusion between fiction and the "truth". The American Dream, encountered through Disney Channel and consumer culture, offers a remarkably simple formula: a memorable name, a recognisable image, a catchy song, and a personality that can be packaged into virtually anything. Here, that formula is adopted before the fame that would ordinarily justify it. The merchandise precedes the celebrity, as though becoming a pop icon were simply a matter of producing the right souvenirs.