Till Death Do Us Part
Milijana Babić
in collaboration with Nada Žgank
Rigo Gallery, 16th August 2023, at 8 p.m.
As part of the artist-in-residence program AiR Kuberton 2021, the artist resided on the property of the prominent Viennese gallerist Ursula Krinzinger in Kuberton, Istria, with an aim of producing an artwork that was to be presented on a group exhibition at the Krinzinger Projekte gallery in Vienna.
Autobiographical work Till Death Do Us Part marks the artist’s first encounter with the art market in the course of two decades of professional artistic activity. Negotiations with the gallerist regarding the production of the artwork and its market price were an extension of the artwork concept. Till Death Do Us Part refers to the patriarchal idea of woman’s marriage to her saviour, god/man, in this simulation replaced by the art market, to which the artist surrenders as a virgin in an advanced age. The photograph captures the bride positioned between the Krinzinger residential house and desacralized Church of St. Lawrence (at the time in the process of conversion into an exhibition space for the purposes of the artist-in-residence program), in the centre of the abandoned village of Kuberton.
Beautiful nature and the surrounding peace, which, together with the available facilities inside the property, represent the living and working environment of artists-in-residence, served as scenography for the performance of the work Artist Must Be Relaxed. The title suggests the continuation of a series of critical artistic reactions to the professional demands that are placed before female artists in our society (to a greater extent and in a different way than male artists). In addition to having to be beautiful (Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful, Marina Abramović, 1975), an artist must be healthy (In corpore sano, Konstrakta, 2022), and in order to fully devote herself to artistic work, she must also be relaxed.
Milijana Babić‘s artistic work is rooted in performative artistic practice, often developing in direction of contextually specific long term actions in public space. The starting point of her work is her position as a woman and an artist, which she questions in her immediate surroundings. She gained formal art education from the Durban Institute of Technology, Durban, Republic of South Africa (2001, BA), and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2007, MA). She lives and works in Rijeka, Croatia.
The photographer Nada Žgank closely follows the field of performing arts on the Slovenian art scene, next to her other interests. She collaborates with various organisations, festivals and other artists, also on author projects.
The production of the work Till Death Do Us Part was cerated as pat of the resideny program AiR Kuberton 2021 organized by Museum Lapidarium and Ursula Krinzinger, and was presented as part of the collective exhibition AiR 2020-2021 Ungarn/Kroatien/Wien in the Krinzinger Shottenfeld Gallery in Vienna ( 23 March – 21 May, 2022).
Gallery Rigo, Velika ulica 5, 52466 Novigrad. The exhibition is open until 12th September 2023.
The realization of the exhibition was made possible by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the County of Istria – Administrative Department for Culture and Homeland, the City of Novigrad-Cittanova and Krinzinger Schottenfeld Vienna.