Looking For Work

The exhibition is based on the
documentation of a year-and-a-half-long action of looking for work, evolving
around an ad stating: Visual artist
urgently looking for any kind of work, which was published continuously in
local advertising publications.

While responses to the ad came mainly from
men offering suspicious work such as massage, accompaniment on travels, nude
photography, “performances” in night bars..., the project also developed
through researching job columns with an aim of undergoing the experience of work.

During the project, the artist worked as a
cleaner, a waitress, a vendor, a distributor... In all cases, apart from the
work found “through a connection”, she was underpaid and treated as a person of
lower rank. Apart from dealing with the research into the labour market in a
time of the highest unemployment rate in Croatia, the project Looking For Work questions the status of
contemporary artists in Croatian society and problematizes the insufficiency of
the artistic profession, with an emphasis on the position of women artists and
the field of visual art.

The conditions in which (not only)
Croatian visual artists work are cheap production, unpaid work, a non-existent
contemporary art market and a lack of systematic promotion on an international
level. Survival within the profession is possible only with external sources of
income. (Milijana Babić)

Organization: City of Women; In
partnership with: Škuc Gallery.
Supported by: EU Culture.

Free entry.