Research Project „Reunion On The Grass – Sharing what can’t be solved!“
Research Project „Reunion On The Grass – Sharing what can’t be solved!“
2018
“All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that’s more social, more collaborative, and more real then art.” Dan Graham/Claire Bishop “Artificial Hells” (2012)
After two years in Vienna I started asking myself where have my persistence and my resistance to all kinds of initial situations gone. Am I going to be able to continue creating and how am I going to encourage myself to carry on? Could some kind of unity with other female artists help me accomplish that and could our mutual approval of each other’s quality and further work be enough?
These were the questions around the project “Swept Under the Carpet!” 2016, with Isidora Krstić, Neda Nikolić, Mirjana Mustra, Ivana Smiljanić, Jelena Micić, Bárbara Palomino Ruiz and Vera Klimentyeva. My research focused on the precariousness of female artists as migrants with the symbolics of the reunion/breakfast on the grass which represents one of the revolutions in the history of modern art. The same way we wonder why there is a nude woman in a male environment in public space (e.g. “The Luncheon on the grass” by Edouard Manet, 1863), during the picnic breakfast I wonder about the purpose of our existence as female artists in a new cultural environment.
“ARTISTIC PRACTICE BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC:
WHAT CAN WE DO TOGETHER FOR OURSELVES?
- Female Artists in Migration “
This research project is dedicated to the analysis of the position of female artists in migration, since I wanted to explore their personal experiences through social, political and cultural influences. The analysis of this subject is divided into two studies, which are actually two practical parts of the project that I performed: “Swept Under the Carpet!” from 2016 and “Reunion on the Grass — Sharing What Can’t Be Solved!” from 2018. Inspired by the questions: How can we be strong enough to always carry on? And, how can we create a platform to support each other? and using a participatory art method (collaboration with seven female artists), I began to analyze the problems that concern all of us as I planned the next levels of the research.
The artists who I collaborated with have come from former Yugoslavia, Russia and Brazil over the past ten years through various types of migrations and, at the moment of our collaboration, they were in Vienna. With each of them, I went for a picnic and used this paradox situation – intimate and at the same time public, enjoyable while tackling our most serious personal issues – to discuss important questions. Our picnic reunions were followed by two research parts of the project. The first one took place in 2016 and the presentation of our collaboration had a visual character of conceptual installation, as a result of my artistic practice. In the second part of the research, which took place in 2018, my artistic practice was replaced by a position of a host, which allowed me to organize a collective presentation of art pieces of all the artists. That way, the research that contains both art and curatorial research methods can show how the line that divides these two professions can be erased.
Biographies of the Participating Artists
Bárbara Palomino Ruiz
Bárbara Palomino Ruiz (São Paulo, Brazil, 1982) is a visual artist whose work focuses on mixed and multimedia creations, with a particular concentration on textiles and the relationship between old and new technologies. Following her interest in textile and digital narratives and technological heritage, she has also reached an artistic research about social productions of memory, affective cartographies, fictional aspects in documenting “reality,” as well as in ethnographic narratives and “invented traditions.” Her work usually involves “translations” to different media and repetitive manual operations, to create serialized patterns or to bring a prefabricated material back to its most elementary primary state. Bárbara Palomino Ruiz holds a postgraduate diploma from the art and audiovisual research center Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains, France (2013-2015), and an MA in Visual Arts (2001-2004) with an emphasis on Textile Arts from the University of Chile. Her work is part of national and international art collections and has been exhibited at renowned venues such as Medienwerkstatt Wien (Austria), Pallazo Mora (Italy), Le Cube (France), Fact Liverpool (England), Galería Gabriela Mistral (Chile), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Santiago (Chile), among others. She currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria, where she was granted in 2017 a studio by das weisse haus, where she continues developing her work.
Isidora Krstić
Isidora Krstić was born in 1987, in Belgrade, Serbia. She grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. She studied Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and completed her MA studies in Art & Science at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna in 2016. She has shown her work most notably in Museo di Arte Contemporanea – Castello di Rivoli, Italy (2008); Amsterdam Biennale (2009); Real Presence workshops in Belgrade, Istanbul and Italy (2006-2010); BILDETAGE Artist-in-Residence, Vienna (2014); Moravska Galerie, Brno, Czech Republic (2014); Wiener Wunderkammer, Technical University of Vienna (2014); with the U10 Art Collective at LISTE Art Fair, Basel (2015) and Berlin Project Space Festival (2016); Volkskunde Museum Vienna (2016). She is a part of the Vienna-based collective 280a, with whom she has exhibited at the APF Athens Photo Festival (2018) and is currently a visiting artist at the residency program A.T.E.N.A. in Sète, France. She is co-founder and part of the artist-run art space U10 in Belgrade. She lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
Ivana Smiljanić
Ivana Smiljanić is a visual artist and performer who was born in Belgrade. She graduated in 2005 from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, where she obtained her MFA in 2009. As a grant-holder of KulturKontakt (Vienna) and SSA (Salzburg), she studied video and performance at the Salzburg Summer Academy for Fine Arts in 2000 and 2002. She attended a one-year program of Women’s Studies at the Center for Women’s Studies in Belgrade (2012/13). In her work, by using various media and resources of her own body, she is recreating/reinterpreting experiences and contexts that she faces as a woman, as an artist and as a citizen. She had solo-shows and performances in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Pančevo, Smederevo, Vranje, Prijepolje, Zagreb, Osijek, Pula, Ljubljana, Bratislava, Brussels, Bergen and New York. She has participated in all major art festivals in Serbia and more than sixty group exhibitions in Europe and the US. She was the winner of the “Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos” Award in 2009 and was the Serbian representative for the Henkel Art Award in 2011. Her works are part of the Telenor Collection. She lives in Belgrade and Bucharest (ivanasmiljanic.com).
Jelena Micić was born 1986 in Knjaževac, Serbia. Since 2013 she has been studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the Textual sculpture class (Heimo Zobernig). She has an MA in Philosophy (2012) and is a graduated philologist of Scandinavian languages (2010) at the University of Belgrade. She worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the Figurative painting class (2016-2017). In 2018 she was awarded with kültür gemma! Fellowship and shortlisted for the Ö1 Talentstipendium Bildende Kunst. She lives and works in Vienna.
Mirjana MUSTRA
Mirjana MUSTRA, born in 1978 in Belgrade, works as a fashion designer and artist in Vienna. She is active in the fields of fashion, visual arts and performance. In her work, she critically deals with the observation of society and her surroundings. Her artistic work focuses on the topics of gender, capitalism, human and women’s rights, as well as spirituality. It is important to her to inspire people to new modes of thinking in order to follow her vision of a world marked by mutual respect, valuing and love. In addition, she regards the continuous cooperation with various artists as an essential part of her artistic expression.
Neda Nikolić
Neda Nikolić is a visual artist, currently living and working in Vienna. In 2010, she graduated from the University of Fine Arts Belgrade, Serbia. Between 2011 and 2016, Neda studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna — painting class, with Johanna Kandl, Monika Gryzmala and Henning Bohl. She was featured in a few solo events, and various group shows, both in Serbia and Austria. She is an interdisciplinary artist, working in different media, combining painting, sculpture, performance and spatial installations. The main subject in her body of work is the topic of the playground — both virtually and in analogue. Her last solo show was her diploma exhibition called “Timelife story/a walkthrough”: a 35m2 installation made of paintings, fabrics, found objects and sculptures.
Vera Klimentyeva
Vera Klimentyeva (born in 1988 in Moscow, USSR) is a multimedia visual artist focused on topics of identity, overidentification, religion, social role models, deconstruction and transformation. In her artwork she seeks explanations and answers to various questions in regard to nowadays situations of different contents, which often deal with spiritual aspects, gender roles, and such concepts as home, cultural heritage, unconditional love, stereotypical national features and symbolism. She is working in the fields of fine arts and graphic design.