Milena Jovicevic's art practice connects to stereotypes and mediocrity in our society. In her point of view, stereotypes, lack of empathy and tolerance determinate this world. "We live in very inspiring times where one can face unbelievable situations full of controversies almost every day, so it’s not that hard to transmit personal experience to a creative act."
Jovicevic takes a multi-disciplinary approach to her practice as she seeks to explore new formats and medias, rather than to work in a single one all the time. Her creative process is driven by ideas, sometimes it comes spontaneously, and sometimes it’s all planned in advance.
"I take notes and make sketches, then I try to find good marriage of concept and media."
Travel takes an important role in her projects. "For fifteen years I travel by car to go to work and I love that feeling. I had similar experiences living in Paris, when I was travelling by train several times per day. It might sound paradoxical, but I’m more focused on creation during my travels, than in a quiet studio. I like to work in residencies as well, create site specific works, and deal with different environments."
I prefer artistic process that cannot be completely controlled and can provoke and make surprises to both sides - myself and the audience.
Several of Jovicevic works deal with consumerism and consumption, directly or indirectly.
Her works Love Story In The National Park, Artist visa, Pay and P(l)ay, Educational reforms, Free Sugar, Sugar Free all target consumerism and its consequences from different angles.
People nowadays have incredible relationships with products, that become the domain of pathology. "We live in a superficial, semi virtual world that is changing very fast, where everything is for sale and everything could be purchased. If accumulation of material goods become the only measure of the value, current worrying state of people and their sick relationships with products are expected consequences."
Artist visa is performative object- sculpture. It is a “credit card” of sparkling gold plastic, with the digit “0” occupying the center. Artist visa is a comment on artists position in contemporary society who experienced that little 0 on their credit card account.
"We live our lives through bank-loans, we depend on small platinum, gold, silver cards that are not even real. Those sweet pieces of plastic painted in gold or other colours become status symbols. They are also virtual at some point. We could not earn as much as we can spend, we always owe something in our meritocratic society, where accomplishments are being measured by material goods, money, consumption, production."
Artist visa was made for a performance and needed engagement of the audience.
"I gave my "gold credit cards” to the public at the opening of an exhibition in Berlin in 2013. They used them as real credit cards in shops. It was weird. The cards were just plastic, without an active magnetic strip, but people took them to nearby shops and tried to use them to purchase real items. That created bizarre situations. I repeated the same performance with passers-by in Warsaw in 2015. One German collector tried to pay for a cake with it. He urged the shopkeepers to keep trying to put the transactions through, but the cards, without a qualifying bank behind them, couldn’t be used to purchase anything."
Currently Jovicevic is working on projects that explore meeting points of art and science at the University of Montenegro. "I meet scientists that are doing interesting researches, so we would work on some projects together." She is also involved in a series of international exhibitions that explore migration.