Starting her performance career in 1979, at a time of intensifying post-conceptual art in Croatia and former Yugoslavia, saw Vlastas own body became the foremost tool of her artistic practise in a male-dominated landscape. The content of her work has tended to be somewhat direct, forthright, but she plays around with this to create a subtle frontier between action and real life. Erotic tension - open, even heightened - is a key element in work that not only confronts taboo themes, but through its public nature, becomes part of a quest for self-knowledge. After a break from performing, she returned to it again in the 90s - but encountered a different challenge. She was now a woman of mature years: facing up to that fact was a painful process that has now filtered through into her work. The search to find herself has now progressed through Im looking for a woman into the finding of a mature woman and then from Conversations with a warrior into Woman has disappeared. Just as before, the performance arising from this phase of her experience should be read as an act of unrestrained sexuality. Moreover, within this very short period of time it is possible to define a whole evolution: from questioning and recognition, through to calm... and safely onto the pleasure of growing older, tinged though it is with melancholy resignation.