Milijana Babić exhibition – Our Beautiful Homeland/Working day

Molekula, Galerija SIZ, 18. November, 20:30h

Our Beautiful Homeland, 2010

Readymade series (stolen)

 The work consists of a readymade series, ingredients and products which symbolize bare existence, stolen in supermarkets. Their exhibit is supported by basic information about the theft of individual items (date, time, trading chain, address).

 The title of the work, Our Beautiful Homeland (Croatian national anthem), ironically points to the betrayed expectations on our new state, which has been  built on and lives by the inherited principle of „Find your way around, comrade!“ , in its most corruptive sense.

 Simultaneously, the stolen articles such as flour, oil, toilet paper etc, touch upon the question of  socially endangered groups, whose survival in the times of recession is pure art (like the artists’ themselves). Therefore, the slogan „Find your way around, comrade!“  could also be understood as affirmative.

 The work is based on a felony, thereby it problematizes the idea of moral, false moral and the loss of moral, in the framework of Croatian reality.

Working Day, 2011

Artistic action / video

The action Working Day problematises the situation in which most freelance artist in Croatia find themselves in when it comes to bare existence, and questions the status of freelance artists in our society.

The project title ironically highlights insufficiency of our profession, within which survival is not possible, due to the fact that our work is hardly paid for and contemporary art market does not exist. In other words, work and payment do not come in the same package.

With a symbolical act of digging through garbage containers, in search for refundable litter, wearing a shirt with the logo of the Croatian Freelance Artists Association, this work aims to add freelance artists onto the growing list of the socially endangered – next to homeless, pensioners, unemployed…

Milijana Babić (b. 1974) is an artist from Rijeka, Croatia, working with installations, performances and artistic actions. She graduated in fine art in Durban, Republic of South Africa in 2001, and received her MA in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2007. She is a long term collaborator of the International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women, Ljubljana. Between 2007-2011, she worked as an associate assistant lecturer at the sculpture department, Academy of Applied Arts Rijeka. Her work has been presented on numerous festivals and exhibitions in the country and abroad.