ARTIST STATEMENT

Project description

With this project I wanted to talk about the different positions of women in contemporary reality . By questioning motherhood , female sexuality , position of women in workplace or within contemporary media, I actually research some of the roles that are assigned to me . Each work is an attempt to at least partially encompass the different realities that surround me and in which I am occasionally forced to settle . I hope you'll find value in this my attempts to express my own ideas through visual media and that I will have the opportunity to show the audience the works in your gallery space . I tried to describe each of the individual works shortly in order to have better insight into the thinking and starting points which led to a realization .

 

Torso

Spatial sculptural installation , bonded paper , variable size (the size of individual sculptures approximately 30x40x60 cm ), 2014.

 

Back in the 2002nd year in fourth grade of secondary school, I first saw a photograph taken in 1961. showing the happening Yard by Alan Kaprow . Even today when I think of that photo I have the same chills that I felt the 2002nd year because I was aware of how radical that idea was . This idea seemed to stray deep into the past because it seems to methat it would be as radical today in the 2014 as it was at the time of the occurrence . Although this work can be read with a lot of different positions , I was most intrigued by the position of the audience . The photography clearly shows the problems that audience who came to exhibition was faced with . The crowd was forced to participate in the work .

Many authors believe that their work a result of introspection and that the position of the audience is that one should put himself in the position of the author , and there is no need for explanation because that's all clearly visible in art work . In this way, artistic expression becomes an alibi and the answer to every question , and the audience comes into the position of a silent observer , and my attitude is just that the audience is the one who needs to find answers to their own questions as well as I have found some answers to my own questions , thinking about work of Alan Kaprow .

It is why I wanted to find a way to actively engage the audience in this work , and it seems to me that the easiest way to do so is to make use of the fact of their physical presence in the gallery space . I have already tried to implement similar idea using drawing as a media in work called Grey , and this time I decided to do a bunch of sculptures that I produced using my own torso . The imagined I set a bunch of these hanging shell into gallery space through which the audience will have to sneak to get to the rest of the exhibition . I want simboliclly raise awareness that women make more than a half of population, and using my own body and the material which I diligently collected all the childhood I give all of the torsos my own identity . The sculptures are made out of the same mold them and that unifies them , but the very fact that they are made from negatives of my torso and napkins that I collected throughout my childhood, I wanted to give them my own personality and get into the personal space of each individual visitor of the exhibition .

 

 

Self-portrait

Collage on MDF , 2x2.5m , of 2014.

 

Self-portrait is a collage on MDF size 2x2 , 5m . It consists of four identical plates on top of which are glued square fragments of photographs cut from pornographic magazines . Each square in the work abounds in content and when viewed from a distance it makes one small part of a self-portrait . In this way, I wanted to ask a question how  viewer looks at a woman ( me) and examine how we are aware of the perception of women as sexual objects within contemporary media .

Blank

Triptych , self-adhesive PVC foil on the wall , variable size 2013.

 

Triptych Blank is designed as a drawing made by machine ​​of PVC foil that is applied directly to the gallery wall . Each drawing is created from photographs of various collectives . So I chose a joint photo of menagement  TDR, a group photograph of the collective of elementary school Donja Dubrava ( partly due to the fact that I myself am a part of a elementary school collective ) and a photo of NATO. I chose these three collectives as examples of uneven distribution of women in various occupations . Specifically , on each of the photos there is a number of women , but I have omitted them deliberately in drawings by drawing exclusively male members of the collective. The drawing TDR has occasional breaks / gaps , but only in the next two drawings idea becomes completely clear . Representation of women in primary education in Croatia is such that we can say that profession is completely feminized and the result is almost non-existence of the drawing , and in high politics there is almost no woman, the result is almost continuous drawing which seems to be complete . The greatest of all art is a drawing of NATO , whose length is 2m . The other two drawings have the same height and length of them is proportionately smaller .

 

Still life

Oil on canvas , 100x80 cm , 2014. ( planned triptych , attached photos / sketches for another image that I'm currently painting )

It is not coincidence that I've chosen for this work the medium of figurative painting. Although I hesitated between oil and watercolor, finally I decided to paint in oil. Watercolor is often perceived as a '' female '' technique which made me both mind and appealing , but I decided to make the painting in oil , primarily because of the interwiew with a German artist Georg Baselitz I've recently read where he was asked about ignificant numerical superiority of men against women among the highest paid contemporary artists, and he responded by saying that women are bad painters . It attracted me to painting , and in particular to oil painting as favourite' male ' technique in which women are inferior . And even before this interview, I was aware of traditionalism of figurative painting that I wanted to correlate with this painting  the same way as the traditionalist attitude towards women . Although I didn't paint four years , I'm not worried about whether the painting would be  high -quality painted . If it was well done - I could always say that is consistent with the very medium that is ' male ' and requires  quality , and if it was bad - again, you can not remove the fact that I am a woman , so that poor performance is not surprising.

 

Besides a medium that evokes traditionalism , as a motive , I decided to show a very traditional still life . In the 17th century, Norbert Schneider compiled a list of motives , ranking them from the loftiest and most noble biblical and mythological scenes , over portraits to the animals and landscapes . Still life is at the last place on the list because it shows the nature in which there is no spirit , a lower form of life . Also interesting is the fact that the images of still life generally was the lowest paid at the time the list which is a nice coincidence with the absence of highest-paid ( by Baselitz quality ) contemporary female artists today . What I wanted to do is to change  items in composition. Men's traditional technique showing the lowest motif of still life which I associate with women . Displaying items women  use for beautyfying , objects used by the mothers - a breast pump, nursing bras , and my goal is to apply traditionalism on these objects by painting them , as it is applied today on Croatian woman, and all the roles in her life - the role of mother , wife , worker ...

Grey

It was Walter Benjamin who started that the viewer absorbs the piece of art as an architecture, which is also capable of creating a simultaneous collective perception. This is exactly what the spacial installation by the name of ''Grey'' seems like, the work of the young author Marija Mikulić Bošnjak, who is an active participiant of the distinctly vivacious contemporary art scene in the city of Osijek.The author creates the above mentioned tactile and visual reception by ''switching the point of view with a point to view''. This work has been created for a specific arhitectural situation, and its size has been adapted to the given space; that is, it is a ''floor '' drawing on paper, whose gigantic proportions (which makes it impossible to ''make out'' the motif at first), rearrange and redefine the gallery hall, which the author sees as a good opportunity to ''take over'' and create a self - made gallery space, almost like an art - squat. The visitor of the gallery is, before discovering the motif of the drawing, faced with the gray, graffite reflection of the floor, which is necessary to be stepped onto, provoking the inevitable dialectic question of a picture of enormous proportions and a tiny fragmental situation, as the question of the inviolability and ''sanctity'' of a work of art in an exibit hall. The emphasis on the psychological dimension by means of a gigantic, technically infallible, abstract drawing, which takes over the entire flooral space, evoking an all-over effect, will, eventually, if we move sufficiently away from it, reveal a character. The motif has been inspired by a person/event from our recent past. The portrait of commeade Tito has a specific meaning for us, as for the author (who is generationally distant from direct experience, though), and it presents not only an inexaustible source of imagination and illusion, but also a stratified and, even today, contradictory meanings, where the political and social engagement of this spacial installation can be seen from. Distinct from the traditional figure of ''a monument'' with witty and even surreal characteristics, it challanges our own opinion of the history and mythology, which define our real and imaginary life. The positioning of the drawing itself; a portrait, a recreated icon from our history, challanges the political society, it ironizes, caricatures and sardonizes authorities and, inevitably, leads to a transformation and mutation as the drawing, gradually, gets destroyed. Simultaneously, motivated and documented by the cameras on the walls of the gallery, proyecting on a screen, the portrait holds both, equally valuable paralel realities; the intrinsic quality of a pencil drawing on paper, the fragility, tranquility and the contemplative beauty, created by the slow and patient process of construction by millions of repetitive, almost meditative strokes.

(Karmela Puljiz)

BIOGRAPHY

PERSONAL DATA

Marija Mikulic Bosnjak

 born in 1983. in Slavonski Brod

Trpanjska 8 , 31 000 Osijek

+385 95 891 95 70

marija.mikulic.b@gmail.com

 

EDUCATION

2009. - 2011. Art Academy in Osijek , graduate fine arts, master of fine arts education

2006. - 2009. Art Academy in Osijek , undergraduate Visual Culture , University bachelor of fine arts education

2003. - 2008. Faculty of education in Osijek , master of education

1998. - 2002. Highschool Matija Mesic

 

AWARDS

2011. Accolade from the Association of Croatian art teachers

2008. finalist of Top scholarship for top students

2007. The city of Slavonski Brod scholarships for outstanding students

2007.  Dean's award for best student at Faculty of education

2004. State scholarship within category B

 

WORK EXPERIENCE

2011. - 2014. Elementary school Luka Botić , Viškovci - teacher of fine arts

2011. - 2014. Elementary school  Blago Zadro, Vukovar -  teacher of fine arts

2009. Elementary School Jagoda Truhelka,  Osijek -  teacher of fine arts

2008. Elementary school  Blago Zadro, Vukovar -  teacher of fine arts, substitude teacher

 

EXHIBITIONS ( SELECTION)

2013./14 . Volumen linije, a group exhibition at the gallery Kazamat, Osijek

2013. Differences , group exhibition at the gallery Ruzic , Slavonski Brod

2013. Grey , solo exhibition at the gallery Događanja , Zagreb

2012./13 . 23rd Slavonian Biennale , Gallery of Fine Arts in Osijek

2011. Photo starter ,travelling exhibition:  gallery Makina, Pula ; Heritage Museum , Rovinj ; Kula Lotrščak , Zagreb

2010./11 . 22nd Slavonian Biennale , Gallery of Fine Arts in Osijek

2010. 1+1 , Kazamat Gallery , Osijek

2009./10 . Starter ; travelling exhibition : Osijek , Ðakovo , Slavonski Brod , Vinkovci , Pozega , Vukovar and Zagreb

2009. World Biennale of student photography , Novi Sad, Serbia

 

Other

Member of HDLU (Croatian society of visual artists)