State Relies on Education, 2023
polyptych, a series of 6 pieces, total size 230 x 135 cm
(book pages, toned frames, wool baize)
The composition interprets one of the works that created the eponymous ambient art intervention in the “Svetozar Marković” University Library in Belgrade, within the 59th October Salon – 2022 Belgrade Biennale. On that occasion, this formation of airplanes was exhibited in the vertical bulletin showcases in the entry hallway of the library. The paper planes were made of book pages by students of the Applied Sculpture Department of the Faculty of Applied Arts during the art action realised together with artist Aleksandra Zdravković. The book pages had been prepared for recycling, so they were not physically torn out.
The work critically examines the attitude of the state and the society to education, through different artistic forms in this site-specific layout, suggesting the following questions: What are the dominant values of today? Why do children read less and less? Do we still believe in their prospects and potentials? In the foundation of this artistic playing lies care, as well as an invitation sent to the state and education system, to re-examine the strategies and long-term quality of the provided education, as well as a call to account directed to the system of education and culture in general.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon and the Artist Collection
Mining agreement: III-30-197/18.10.2023.
Inventory no: 190
Photo: courtesy of the artist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Milica Crnobrnja Vukadinović (1975, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated from, received her MA degree and defended her doctoral project at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. She also graduated from the Academy of the Serbian Orthodox Church for Art and Conservation in Belgrade. She has been active in both group and solo exhibitions, while her works could be found in many national and international collections. She received many accolades for her artistic work. She works at the Faculty of Applied Arts as a professor in the art field of Drawing and Painting.
micikato-art.blogspot.com
“The artistic opus of Milica Crnobrnja Vukadinović has been defined by a gradual, yet very consistent examination of different media, techniques, materials and formats, allowing the artist to elaborate and develop her artistic work in terms of ideas. Ranging from drawing, embroidery, collage and photography to video, and from miniatures to large-scale and complex site-specific and ambiental works, Milica applies a wide array of approaches and expressions in the visual meditations and interpretations of her main motifs and subjects, i.e. the spaces and contexts of immediate lived-in and everyday environments. Examining these in terms of their small-scale contents, dynamics, orders and relations of their appearances, the artist employs her formal and composition approach to offer a highly intimate look and comment on our collective experiences and the ever more complex and demanding realities. In the meticulous blending and interplay between her chosen media, approaches, procedures, as well as quality, aesthetic and symbolic potentials of the materials, Milica’s works, in interaction with the location of exhibiting, i.e. the spatial and semantic predetermination that define them, are granted an additional conceptual depth and refinement of artistic expression, and their further, possible interpretations.”
Miroslav Karić, curator and art historian