Montenegrin artist Milena Jovićević, who works at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje, with her doctoral thesis on the subject of the phenomenon of consumerism and the concept of the body in the fine arts of the XNUMXth and XNUMXst centuries, attracted a lot of attention from the Belgrade art audience and critics with her provocative concept.
Milena presented herself in the Arte gallery with an exhibition called "Free Sugar", which "explores the body in consumer society, the body as an object, the body as a sociological construction" through several media.
"My artistic preoccupations are always related to what bothers or intrigues me in everyday life, especially what is current and about which a lot of dust is raised... In this work, the preoccupation is the Body in the context of prevailing consumerism.
"Never has the representation of the body been so multiplied and standardized as it is today, in film, television, advertising, pornography..."
It is a story about the triumph of material values over the spirit, the artificial over the essence, the abuse of the body, beauty, eroticism, sexuality for the sake of vain pleasure... The story of modern civilization through the body, the story of the body through modern civilization...
Contemporary theoreticians and philosophers claim that there has never been such a panic about the body, nor has there been such an obsessive concern with the body as during the XNUMXth and early XNUMXst centuries. Art, too, has never depicted the body as much as in the second half of the XNUMXth century and at the threshold of the new millennium.
The representation of the body has never been so multiplied and standardized as it is today, in film, television, advertising, pornography...
All this talk about the body within the general madhouse of the most vulgar and cheapest form of exhibitionism and voyeurism naturally puts the female body in the foreground as an object of beauty, logically follows the problematization of male-female relations, stereotypes... The industrialization of everything, including the spirit, with the triumph of spectacle and striptease..."
In your central work, you pitted two women's teams against one another in table football - one silicone-molded and one traditional. Neither side seems to be winning. Why?
"The installation called Men's Games is a table football made of glass with transparent figures of female players. One team consists of figures of silicone barbies, the opposing figures are traditional women with scarves on their heads, in long skirts.
"This is a game on "men's ground", by "men's rules"... I don't allow that game to start, there are no winners..."
The work questions the stereotype about the utility value of the female body. One stereotype (silicone girl) is the personification of "sexual pleasure", the other (traditional woman) is a symbol of "fidelity, motherhood, home". It is also a war between tradition and modernity, in which women are almost always the object.
By choosing two extremely different representations of the female, the first of which "spouses" or "satisfies" the man's space - the bed, and the second space - the warm home, I try to create an absurd conflict situation in which these two teams of women play against each other in the battle for the man's affection , who is absent.
Which is not intended for actual play. Figures are fixed. This is a game on a "man's field", by "men's rules"... I will not allow that game to begin, there are no winners... We will wait for these women to play on "their own field".
Milena Jovićević: Men's games
What terrain is necessary for triumph?
"Terrain that is not on "glass legs"."
On a tray, bulging men demonstrating power and sexuality are offered as easily melting sweets? You point to...
"On the tray are real sugar lollipops in the form of bulging male bodies. The utopia of consumerism glorifies the production and use value of the body. Playing with the label Sugar Free that consumer society puts on food products with the aim of healthier nutrition, I make an inversion and offer sugar lollipops free, or For Free.
This time we get free lollipops or free sugar in the form of muscular male Bodies in response to the constant abuse of the female Body for pleasure and pleasure. A man's bulging torso caught in a spasm of struggle or admiration over his own body was turned into a lollipop...
"A real feast for brainwashed consumers - souvenir penises - fridge magnets"
Every day we see women's bodies through dolls, doubles, puzzles... It's more interesting to see what masculinity looks like melted into sugar... When I was making these lollipops, the image of a crowd of tourists huddled around some specific souvenir in a boutique under the wonderful Acropolis museum in Athens...
A real feast for the brainwashed consumer - souvenir penises - fridge magnets."
Your video work, which is part of the above-mentioned installation, gives a completely different dimension and interpretation to the biblical legend about the creation of man. What plan did you come up with for Adam?
"Infernal... The animated film is called ADAM I... It is clear from the title that it is a story only about Adam and that Eve is not important. The video turns the biblical legend about the creation of the world into a grotesque story about a self-sufficient, arrogant Adam who does not wait for God to he created Eve from his rib, but he himself creates her by planting the rib in the ground and carefully watering it.
After that, of course, he proceeds to create the rest of the world from the remaining ribs. The little man Eve sways seductively on the paradise branch without a fig leaf, serving exclusively as a decoration of Adam's paradise. However, neither Eve nor the rest of the world is enough for Adam anymore, and he soon begins to deal with what he has created.
The story of Genesis turns into the story of Destruction in which Adam destroys everything he created and at the very end commits suicide by hanging, realizing the senselessness of his actions.
Milena Jovićević: Adam
Only a leaf from his Body survives and flutters freely at the end of the film. It is not a fig leaf, but a four-leaf clover from which another, better world may arise... The whole story about the first man is meaningless at the very beginning when Adam is born by a woman - Adam emerges from the womb of Courbet's painting The Origin of the World. It's awkward to recount."
These days you are defending your dissertation. Can you bring us closer to a topic related to the body and the concept of beauty then and now?
"How strange it sounds, a dissertation, a doctorate in art... If I defend it, I enroll in a postdoctorate...
Modern civilization has gone too far, trivializing the myth of beauty, putting bodies up for sale like other goods of the material world. At the center of the charming psychology of hedonism and the game of pleasures, colors, tastes, contents, of course, is the female body as an object of desire, not a subject of desire, an object of entertainment and consumption, today one styling, tomorrow restyling and so on. The body is everywhere. Mostly female.
"The Lord had no idea that that leather dress for Eve would soon wear out and be too wide"
It melted over screens, windows, billboards, buses, buildings, airports. Disaggregated, zoomed, beautified, shiny, colored, awe-inspiring. It sells furniture, car tires, anti-depressants, clothing, yachts, plane tickets, meat industry products, tools, jewelry, newspapers, movies...
In order for that body to be representative, toned, ironed and live up to the fantasy of eternal youth, there are contemporary artists - plastic surgeons... "And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin, and clothed them in them".
The Lord had no idea that that leather dress for Eve would soon wear out and be too wide, but He knew that everything would be resolved when Adam was with her. Eva asks for help from master Adam and he figures out how to change her dress, sew it, tighten it, enrich it with different new materials.
"Everything is instant in a dehumanized instant civilization"
He, as a direct messenger of God (be it a surgeon, stylist or photographer), immediately understood what Eva was missing. And it's always missing... In short... it's a story about a civilization in which everything is replaceable, renewable, short-lived. Everything is instant in a dehumanized instant civilization.
Let's remember an event not so long ago, and at the same time a media spectacle: "The frozen, bloodied body of Muammar al-Gaddafi is publicly displayed in the refrigerator of a shopping center in Misrata, and in the West the question is getting louder whether the media did not go too far in portraying the death of the deposed Libyan leader." , writes the AP agency.
The photos show the body of Gaddafi covered with a blanket, and a line in front of the entrance of those who want to enter and see the murdered Libyan leader. Isn't this the best illustration of the body and man in modern society? There is no better illustration of our times..."
But the media still can't publish works of art where heroes smoke cigarettes. Your earlier cycle is just related to a visually forbidden ritual. How do you react?
"As you can see, you can't publish those pictures with cigarettes and they're no longer current... I adapted to new trends and started making silicones that should be, but certainly won't be censored... so you can publish them to your heart's content ."
All the drawings from which the video work was created were drawn in the iPhone, with a finger, via the touch screen screen?
"The animation was made from drawings that I made in the Doodle Buddy program on the iPhone. The entire story of the Genesis of the World is set on a terrain reminiscent of a bizarre video game, referring to new technologies and new forms. Even some details from iPhone video games are part of the drawings .
The main character Adam spins frantically around the screen space with irritating sounds of digital media that imitate the sounds of nature. The right combination for the online generation Bible+iPhone+video games..."
The "myth of beauty" is a new utopia
"The segment of the doctoral thesis dealing with the female body explores the concept of beauty, then and now. It relies on a brief overview of beauty ideals across civilizations and stops at our civilization that launched a new model of sexuality and femininity through lewd oversized plastic bodies grinning from TV- or billboards of gray uniformed cities...
The pillar of that story is the "myth of beauty" and the concept of "forever young", which appears as a new utopia of our time and through which the perfect manipulation and control of the "other sex" is established.
Bonus video:
