Martina Miholić

In this work, three Croatian artists living in London, gathered around mutual interest, and the need to appropriate to the new environment. Starting point was the conversation abut perception and stereotypes built around  Balkan women who just want to get married for a visa.
We have continued  our work with an analogy of 'bride' who comes in a new house where she finds existing hierarchy and set of roles she needs to adapt and obey. How to be successful in the new situation, depends on her ability to adopt and subtly changes her new environment.
The Balkan Bride's Project  is a collage of experiences, works, different medias and it  does not end with the physical manifestation of the work.  It organically grow trough the collaboration of three authors and contact with the audience.

At the private view night,  with all possible means we tried to persuade visitors  we were good marriage material. Dressed  in wedding dresses, we were acting as a charming hostess  and offering visitors home made schnapps. We were the "new brides  in the house". We took ethnological path of that role: shoving off our "host" skills, which are next to a dowry, highly rated  in traditional communities, where woman knows she belong to the kitchen.
In a form  of appealing and typical Balkan party we tried to ask  numerous questions about cultural differences, emigrant  and immigrant policies, citizens of another order, hopes and expectations, immigrant women, and their market value.