Milica Rakić ▪︎ Red, If You Didn’t Exist…
16/ 5 – 23 / 6/ 2024
Museum of contemporary art Zagreb, Black Box
Program of the 17th Subversive Film Festival and the Cinematography of Resistance program created in cooperation between the 59th October Salon, the Cultural Center of Belgrade and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb
Author of the exhibition concept: Leila Topić
Curators: Zorana Đaković Minniti, Dina Pokrajac, Leila Topić
Thursday 16/5 at 7 pm – opening
Friday, 17/5 at 5.30 pm – talk and screening of the films: Milica Rakić, Vladimir Bjeličić, moderated by Dina Pokrajac
Milica Rakić’s short film, which was awarded at the 59th October Salon, deals with historical facts and stories that, regardless of their local context, touch on issues such as women’s rights, gender issues, participation and visibility of women in public life.
The exhibition is part of the program of the 17th Subversive Film Festival and the Cinematography of Resistance program and was created in cooperation between the 59th October Salon, the Cultural Center of Belgrade and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.
…The exhibition set up in the Black Box in a way presenta a step out of the physical film shot frame and represents the imaginary interior of a 1930s bourgeois villa in which Red is giving her posthumous monologue. On the walls and in the space we see Red’s collection of art, made mostly between the 1950s and 1960s, testifying to a consistent affirmation of her own aesthetic experience. Aware of the need to act publicly, Red intensely socialised with artists and supported the establishment of the Yugoslav cultural identity which passionately believed in the socialist project, bearing in mind the formal complexity of such an ideological and ethical choice. Her artistic selection was made at a time of destalinisation and liberation of cultural production in Yugoslavia, but also in the Eastern Bloc with an understanding of modernity, whose backbone is no longer collectivism but rather individualism. Red’s collection is made by embracing the innovative experiences of contemporary European art and maintains the qualities of international mainstream, demonstrating that she wasn’t a slave to proscribed topics, that she followed the deconstruction of socialist realism and re-establishment of modernist ideas. She ignored Krleža’s hypothesis that Murtić’s painting was “a dangerous deviation of taste” (Krleža, O tendenciji, Exceptional Plenum of the Yugoslavian Writers’ Alliance, Belgrade, 1955), as well as Depolo’s disappointment with “the hollow period” of contemporary art (J. Depolo, U znaku mrlja. Pismo s Biennala u Veneciji, Vjesnik, Zagreb, 1958), without taking an interest in subjecting art to an ideological imperative, just like she didn’t subject feminism to the new social order. Exploring the issues of the modernist paradigm in a broader European context, with the works of Vojin Bakić, Jagoda Buić, Sonia Delaunay, Marijan Jevšovar, Edo Murtić, Ksenija Kantoci or Josip Vaništa, she created a specific art collection which represents an existential and spiritual experience of her own time.
(taken from Dina Pokrajac’s text)
In addition to Milica Rakić’s works, we are presenting:
Slava ANTOLJAK, Vojin BAKIĆ, Jagoda BUIĆ, Sonia DELAUNAY, Dušan DŽAMONJA, Vera FISCHER, Oskar HERMAN, Ljubo IVANČIĆ, Marijan JEVŠOVAR, Ksenija KANTOCI, Albert KINERT, Vladimir KRISTL, Fernand LEGER, Pit MONDRIAN,Edo MURTIĆ, Ivan PICELJ, Sofi TOBER-ARP, Josip VANIŠTA
Exhibition concept author: Leila Topić
Exhibition curators: Zorana Đaković Minniti, Dina Pokrajac, Leila Topić
Milica Rakić (1972) is a multimedia artist focusing on the influence of language and culture on the shaping of identity, interpreting ideological codes in a historical and contemporary context. She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Visual Arts in Belgrade. She has presented her works at thirty solo and over four hundred group exhibitions in Serbia and abroad (Albania, USA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Egypt, Iran, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, China, Hungary, Macedonia, Mexico, Germany, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Turkey, France, Croatia, Montenegro, Spain). A member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia, with an independent artist status.