ARTiculAction
Milena Jovicevic
without even knowing or realizing it. Our visual sphere is saturated with re-sexualized objects�. My sculptures such as lollipops and calculating machines talk about that problem using the same visual language. PAY & P(L)AY is overdimensioned custom-made abacus, an ancient tool for calculating purchases and debts. Old fashioned adding machine is modernized by being outfitted with the female anatomy. Everything is for sale and everything is purchased. You can pay, then play with calculating machine made of female breasts. The body, especially female is such extent vulgarized and abused that I am panic-stricken thinking about it. Ancient Greece was obsessed with them body, but also with the spirit. From this equilibrium could not bear such a deviation, nor this obsession was directed against the body and human as it is today. Every-thing is measured by money and the accumulation of material goods... In this zone of general madness and vulga-rization of all fields: public and private, individual and collective, the body is in the center of all events. In my work I explore the body reduced to a function and matrix for the producing of physical, often mechanical pleasures. The current order has placed it among one of items of consumerism which we consume as any other object of consumption In these years your artworks have been exhibited and appre-ciated in many cultural events, competitions, exhibitions across your country and abroad: moreover, you have been awarded several times... It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...
Awards can be simulating, of course, but not most important. I'm sure that creative process of some artists could be influenced by expectation of an award but I'm not one of them. I feel dialogues with other cultures that artist can get through grants and residen-cies are much more important then awards. My works originate from the need to express myself in relation to the world around me, its deviations, problems, phenomena, nightmares, joys. It is certainly not my priority to sell or satisfied wide audience, neither to sell works. I prefer talk to smaller audience that will feel my work then do to adopt the work to wide audience. The feedback is very importanat to me. That audience is not always the same and that's interesting. 86
PAY & P(L)AY,
Berlin, Germany, 2013