Martina Miholić

Pride and prejudices or Six characters in search of an author

Six characters in a search of an author or specifically young artists of Project 6, Tea Hatadi, Zdravko Horvat, Igor Juran, Martina Miholic, Maja Rozman and Karla Suler have been cooperatively exploring an experimental, working and creative platform that deals with the question of what occures when we enter the work of other author and search for the points of overlapping and echoes of ours. And they enjoy it and continue driven by the desire to reach further in fragile undefined zones in-between the relations of You and I-author, You and I work/subject/viewer/listener/reader.

Those zones are permanently subject of questioning, digestion and reading on our own way. But, how is possible and measurable in that same process to bandwidth one to another and could we really deviate from ourselves so easily? Or why should we in spite the awareness that every one of us in hers/his own system of operating has been nurturing cultural stereotypes and prejudices which we could bring to our senses, unblock or even eliminate them through the work of the other.

In that manner Martina Miholic in a work Tagbox/Pride and prejudices subjects herself to an experiment by sending an electronic questionnaire to her close and distant milieu of acquaintances with a pattern of questions like: “where have we met?”, “what am I to you?”, “quote a dozen of character features that would describe me”, or “in which roles in life could you imagine me?”. In the instructions Martina gave to the questioned was specifically stated that they can use short features, have no discretion limits, and speak freely of any kind of character liking or disliking. Driven by a desire to analyze and deconstruct our outer shield that could simultaneously attract or reject us from the others , confronting with herself in the eyes of other people, the author creates a box which splits multiple perspectives and communication nods of You and Me relations, and reveals contradictions that are contained within. In that process she herself is more than aware of a fact in what measure we are subject to a marketing image and various fashions (especially a female), archetype heritage and a lack of quality time. Personal bareness and dismantling of a subject position is author’s fundamental method of facing the prejudices.

Ivana Mestrov

art theorist, critic

Other:

www.cunterview.net/index.php/Izlozbe-/-Osvrti/Grupa-Projekt-6-Stereotipi-i-predrasude.html

http://www.hdlu.hr/2008/08/grupa-%E2%80%9Eprojekt-6%E2%80%9C-stereotipi-i-predrasude