Reading Terror

Milica Tomic´s work deals with a variety of social, political and existential issues. In her work I am Milica Tomic, shown in 2005 at the exhibition Re-Act in Kunsthallen Nikolaj, she addressed constructions of identity and nationality in a video where she – tall, slim, radiantly beautiful, and only wearing a white slip – repeats the sentence “I am Milica Tomic, I am a Serb, I am Milica Tomic, I am a Korean .... ”, each time in a new language and as a new nationality. With each statement, a bloody mark appears on Tomic’s body. Tomic believes that art is best able to communicate the complexity of issues with which she deals, including war, class struggle, and identity, topics that are cornerstones of the artist’s works.

Tomic´s research revolves around the roles and identities we take on / are imposed upon us, and in particular the different roles in crime, victim vs. perpetrator – and not least how and why the roles sometimes shift. In this field she investigates war, and the change in the perception of war, which has come from dealing with terrorism, where war is no longer a last resort for a political conflict, but a permanent condition, posing the question: who is terrorized and who is the terrorist?

In Reading Terror we meet three newer and on-going projects:

Reading Capital – An installation featuring photos and a video of prominent Texans who, from their desk in the financial community, or at home in their armchair, recite Karl Marx’s Capital.

Container – A project that revolves around the war crime that occurred in Afghanistan in November 2001, where Taliban prisoners were loaded into containers and transported though the desert for several days, en route to prison. During the transport, Northern Alliance soldiers fired their rifles against the container to create breathing holes, killing many within. The few prisoners who did survive were later executed. Although the story was later revealed, no pictures exist, which plays an integral role in the project.

One Day, Instead of One Night, a Burst of Machine-Gun Fire Will Flash, if Light Cannot Come Otherwise – A video / photo action which shows Tomic in an artistic intervention in a public space, moving through the streets with an AK47 in hand visiting sites where antifascist actions has taken place. This action was previously done in Belgrade and repeated in Copenhagen two days prior to the opening.


[FACT]

Milica Tomic, was born in 1960 in Belgrade. A visual artist who lives and works in Belgrade and Vienna, her choice of media includes video, film, photography, performance, actions, sound and light installations, web projects, and discussions. Tomic’s work centers on issues of political violence, nationality and identity, with particular emphasis on the tension between personal experience and media-made images.

In 2003, Tomic represented Yugoslavia at the Venice Biennale.