Milena Vukoslavović, Podgorica
Biography
Milena Vukoslavović (1990) was born in Bar, Montenegro. She graduated from the arts high school “Petar Lubarda” in Cetinje, Department of Fine Arts. In 2013, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in printmaking, the class of Prof. Anka Burić, at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cetinje. She has exhibited at several collective exhibitions in Montenegro and abroad. She is engaged in drawing, painting, wall painting, illustration, runs art workshops for children. Her recent projects include аrt workshops within the accompanying program of the festival “Barski ljetopis“ in Bar, and creating visual material for the cycle of radio dramas “Zemlja naša strašna“ under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of Montenegro. She lives in Podgorica.
Artist Statement
The paintings I am currently working on have a basis in drawing and printmaking, but exclusively from the aspect of observing the immediate environment. I do not find the starting point for my work, neither before nor now, in the field of imagination. I am interested in living space, objects in space, the meaning and significance of space in everyday life. For now, the paintings I work on are devoid of human figures. However, I do not see it as a kind of decision - it can be said that it is a kind of caution. Because for now, the most important thing for me in the process is to keep my focus, as well as the focus of the observer, on images that, despite that predetermined loneliness, still do not reflect closedness, isolation and anxiety, but silence, calm, melancholy. On the other hand, there is a decision to approach the essence of the presented object, ie space, through acrylic paints, with a realistic approach. This is not the so-called photorealistic approach, however: I try to keep the image space open and alive enough, and not photographically clogged and frozen. So, from the technical point of view, I am also interested in the gradual construction of light, the definition of spatial relations, the gradual materialization, without delving into superfluous descriptions. Despite this lack of narration and avoidance of an illustrative approach, I find that these images communicate with the observer. What I see as crucial at this point is that these images, as one constant, retain within themselves that immediate, human component.
