Nonsens

The philosophical questions I ask-who? where?-are deeply
rooted in the idea of invisible reality. In my search for the perfect place (a
home), I am intrigued by the boundless possibilities within childlike
imagination and the purity of its vision. My work can be seen as escapism into
the imaginative, as the consequence of a conscious rejection of reality and the
denial of logic. (Milijana Babić)

The young installation artist Milijana Babić has
embarked on a search for a conceptual home, not a physical place, but an ideal
one based on her utopian ideas. Her search was inspired by the imagination of
children and the activity of play, both of which are able to dissolve limits
and boundaries. A recurring motif in her installations, paintings and
sculptures is that of the pig-tailed girl, Babić's alter ego, who searches for
identity and "a home away from home". In Nonsense-one of the works
featured at City of Women-this figure is represented by a large, white, blow-up
Alice-in-Wonderland doll. Slumped and hunched over, it fills a tiny room,
having taken a sip from the magic "Drink Me" bottle. Accompanied by
the spiritual figure of the Rabbit and a wall drawing that includes the
well-known song asking us to join the dance, the installation playfully
references the fictions in our lives even as it requests our active engagement
in the creation of our own identity in our dance with the world.
Babić emphasises that it is not her own childhood that particularly interests
her. Her works are devoid of any personal detail; instead, she creates an
imaginative space for engagement. Through a simplified aesthetic that rarely
ventures beyond black, grey and white, the use of enlarged children's colouring
book and puzzle games, as well as play with individual words and their
associated meanings, her works invite the viewer to fill in the blanks and
embark on her or his own imaginative journey.
In her Not for Sale exhibition for the Durban Designers Emporium show in 2002,
Babić juxtaposed fashion symbols, such as the "one size fits all"
sentence on a large mirror, with an aluminium cut-out "hang-girl" and
the incomplete word "f_ee", implying liberty ("free") and
entrapment ("flee"). In her Hopscotch installation in 2002, parts of
which will be presented at the Alkatraz Gallery, Babić used shiny silver
candies to write the word "feel" on a dark wall, and then built a metal
cage around it. The viewer could only see the objects of desire behind bars. In
Flame-one of her most recent installations at the New Durban Gallery
(2003)-visitors were invited to connect the dots in a wall drawing of a cosy
living room scene, as well as to fill in the empty walls. The fireplace inside
the gallery framed flames cut from mirrors, and so the fire, considered to be
the heart and warmth of a home, actually reflected the viewer. Home, according
to Babić, ultimately exists within oneself.
Bettina Knaup

Organisation: City of Women
In co-operation with: KUD Mreža, Galerija Alkatraz - AKC Metelkova mesto