Sans titre
Sculpture glass, wood, stone
150 x 70 x 65 cm – 59 x 27,5 x 25,5 inches
2015

When and how did you first become interested in art?
I was always interested in drawing and painting. I was drawing since I was very little. I just needed it. I don’t have artists in my family. I didn’t know much about art. My father draws very well, my mother also, but they are both in economics, they never did art. I wanted to study Biology after Gymnasium. A few days before entering exam for Biology I just changed my mind and went to Academy of Fine Arts. Fortunately I have succeeded. Even without studying art I think I would continue to do it, anyway. I started practicing art professionally after graduating in 1999.

What are your artistic influences?
I was educated in different faculties and different cultures from 1995, till 2012. (Faculty of Fine Arts Cetinje, Ecole des Beaux Arts Paris and Le Mans, University of Arts Belgrade). It’s a long period. During that time, I certainly had different influences, but I think that staying in Paris and traveling around from 1999 till 2005 was the most important for my art. Intensity of such experiences made my art more diverse, more engaged, more critic, open to various medias and push it toward challenges more then comfort zone of art practice. That was opportunity to see magnificent works of art for real and to face art in all aspects. I was deeply touched, among others, by Egyptian artist Ghada Amer and her big paintings that question gender issues and the woman role in society. I could stay for hours in front of her works feeling that pain and ambiguity between Eastern and Western society. Maybe that’s also the point when I discovered that gender questions will be my favorite topics. I like very much Montenegrin artist that lived in Paris: Dado Djuric, Francis Alÿs, Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Sigmar Polke, Philip Guston, Maurizio Cattelan, Christian Boltanski, William Kentridge, Wang Du, Urs Fischer, Bruce Nauman, and Roman Opalka, but I’m not sure if their work had influence on my art practice.

What subjects do you deal with in your art? What themes do you pursue?
I deal with different topics in my art, from everyday life situations to ecological and more social topics. I explore boundaries between natural and artificial, permitted and prohibited, material and spiritual, real and virtual. Most of my works explores the stereotypes that determinate our society, with an emphasis on male-female relations. Some of my works are referencing the patriarchal society in Montenegro and gender issues significant to the local community, but that can also be understood on a more global level and have universal application. Contemporary society often creates exhausting and disturbing environment and I found that inspiring for my art works. My inspiration often comes from the things and events that disturb me and make me angry or sad. I’m realizing works in different techniques and medias  painting, sculpture, in situ, wall painting, video animation and digital drawings. My works are ironic, with critic approach. One of the subjects that intrigue me constantly is a phenomenon of consumer society. As an artist, I am sad to admit that all is about money nowadays. Everything is measured by accumulation of material goods…. All fields of our life are vulgarized: public and private, individual and collective. Nowadays, body becomes as any other item of consumption.

Love story in the national park
Video – duration 9:41
2015

Tell us about Love Story In The National Park
The video Love Story in the National Park is an almost documentary video (duration 9:41) with ironic and critical approach to the questions of environment and preserving of nature. Camera follows floating of plastic bag and plastic bottle through amazing landscapes of rivers Zeta and Morača on their way to the Skadar Lake (Montenegro). The video starts with scenes of beautiful nature and original natural sounds. It seems like frames at Zen channel till we observe a huge plastic bottle sailing in the river Zeta. The irony becomes even bigger when camera goes thorough places of outstanding beauty and discovers different sorts of garbage that appear continuously as the natural part of those landscapes. Natural sounds such as murmur of the river, birds chirping, the croaking of frogs, which are original, seem unreal. At the end, plastic lovers finally meet each other in one of hidden places at National Park Skadar Lake. They travelled a lot, more then 100 km. This work is my contribution for celebration of 25 years since proclamation of Ecological State Montenegro.

What about PAY & P(L)AY, Artist visa, could you describe us this artworks? How do you use irony in your work to deal with social topics?
The work PAY & P(L)AY is oversized custom made abacus, an ancient tool for calculating purchases and debts. It’s made of wood and iron. An 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 and calculate with abacus made as female breasts. It explores abusing of woman body and body in general in consumer society. Vulgarization of human body becomes normal part of everyday life. “We consume sex on a daily basis without even knowing or realizing it. Our visual sphere is saturated with re-sexualized objects.” Artist visa is piece that consists of performative sculpture (100 plastic cards) and more videos. It is a comment on artist’s position in contemporary society. It seems that in the past artist was much more respectful then in our meritocratic society, where accomplishments are being measured by material goods, money, consumption, production. Artist visa is gold credit card with one 0 in the middle. There is nothing on it, not even cardholder name, no date, nothing but zero as the most important number of identification. If I have 0 I am 0, and it is not necessary to put my name, address, birth, and country. The amount is only valid identification. I made “gold credit cards” and gave them to the public at the opening of one exhibition in Berlin 2013. I repeated the same performance with passers by in Warsaw 2015. The cards were just plastic, without an active magnetic strip, but people took them to nearby shops and tried to use them to purchase real items. They urged the shopkeepers to keep trying to put the transactions through, but the cards, without a qualifying bank behind them, couldn’t purchase anything. It was very bizarre situation. The sellers very confused tried and tried to use it, but everything went wrong at the end.

Pay & p(l)ay
Installation
Wood, iron
2013

How would you describe your artistic approach?
I would describe it as mostly critic and more or less provocative, even when it seems not to be at all. Art that I create cannot exist separately from who I am and how I live. All my attitudes and life occupations are in my works. I walk from one medium to another, from one topic to another, without fear of facing unknown medium or unknown field. I need challenge. My art is my way to comunicate with world around me…I like in citu projects, artistic process that holds surprises, that can’t be completely controlled by me or by the public. I love to go back to some works and to repeat them in different environments and different circumstances. I find it more interesting and more complex to work in various medias. An important part of my work is travel and working in residencies.

Could you talk to us about the Sustainable Privatization?
Sustainable Privatization is one of my favorite works, because I changed idea for work when I went to visit the space. That piece has more characteristics of performance, or performative sculpture. It is realized for very interesting international project called Informal Mind, curated by MAM Foundation in former metallurgic complex of Elbasan, Albania 2014. When I went there I have seen very sad situation in the ruins. I was trying to secretly take photos of half naked workers who were doing something in the middle of the ruins. They were calm and focused, but a little bit embarrassed. Then I noticed that they were stealing leftovers of the buildings as well as firebrick that they would later sell in the town. That absurd action reminds me of old factories and their destinies in Montenegro. I used to hear many stories about well-known factory OBOD which produced home appliances in ex Yugoslavia city of Cetinje, Montenegro. When the factory collapsed, people stole everything they could: fridges, freezers, cookers. People were stealing parts of sheet metal appliances and later would built them into the roofs, fences… The factory was devastated for a moment. That scene inspired me and therefore I have decided to reproduce that action of stealing of public property in wider context in the frame of Informal Mind exhibition. It’s a perfect illustration of our relation to the past. The work Sustainable Privatization questions the fact that we can destroy and steal everything that is “public property” from the past without any responsibility. I wonder if our existence nowadays is all about stealing and cheating. The work involves employees that are destroying the building and stealing fire bricks in Metalurgjik ruins for my company called ABBE (Art Brick Black Eagle). Then they pack stolen objects in some well designed luxury boxes in front of the visitors while trying to sell them, each 100 euro or 14.000 Albanian Leks. My brand new company is stealing the state property (firebricks of Metalurgjik Elbasan) transforming it to my private goods that I will later sell. I need only good package and good design. I put a little stamp of my company on a stolen object and visitors can buy it as a new brand. I put little eagle in my company’s logo just to involve my patriotic feelings (We both have the eagle, Montenegrin and Albanian eagle as a national symbol). All those dubious privatizations which are the main topic nowadays, work on a same or similar principle, but on a higher level. These two words: “privatization” and “sustainable” we hear at least ten times a day. My privatization will be sustainable as long as I can steal and sell stolen objects. So, please, go ahead and buy my Art Brick Black Eagle bricks.

Sustainable privatization
Performance
Original firebricks from the factory Metalurgjik Elbasan,
luxury boxes, stamps, table, saten canvas
performed by Ana Dragic
2014

How would you describe the art scene in Montenegro?
Montenegro’s art scene has always been very rich and interesting, especially when we consider the kind of small space it is created on, but is not sufficiently valorized. It seems that it is still too dependent on a conventional and expected trend, often rejecting provocative and more experimental forms of expression in favor of mediocrity and like ability. Growing generations are facing a conservative art system and therefore adopt some other ways of thinking, turn more to global trends, less local. Due to that fact that I work at Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje, I have more then ten years of pedagogical experience. I can see lots of problems that young generations are facing, but I think that their art will refresh our scene and give it what it’s missing.

What do you think is the role of the artists in society?
I don’t think anymore that Art can transform the world, because things went wrong in many parts of this crazy world, but anyway it has some kind of magic that can transforms some people, makes our lives less superficial and save our souls somehow. I don’t think that role of artist is to decorate this strange world with “beautiful” paintings, but opposite. An artist must be a voice of freedom, voice of human and good things. It’s less important which way artist chooses to tell his story, but it has to be active, engaged, and confront this world.

What are you currently working on?
I prepare exhibitions in Italy, France and Greece for 2016. I hope I will realize my residency program in NY, which I couldn’t do in 2015 because of lots of obligations at the Faculty.