Artist’s Film Program at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade will have the opportunity to present the film “The Final Battle” by artist Mladen Miljanović from October 25 to November 12, 2024. The film will be screened in the Miodrag B. Protić Hall during the museum’s entire working hours.
The first screening of the film will take place on Friday, October 25, at 6 p.m., followed by a conversation (Artist talk) with Mladen Miljanović at 7 p.m., moderated by Mišela Blanuša, Head of the Department of Art Collections and Exhibitions at the Museum. This will also be the film’s first museum screening, after which it will be shown in Paris, Budapest, Perth, Berlin, and Sydney.
Mladen Miljanović (born 1981)
Born in Zenica (Yugoslavia) in 1981, graduated from high school in Doboj. After high school, he attended the Military School of Reserve Officers. In 2002, he entered the Academy of Arts in Banja Luka, painting department. In addition to artistic practice and research, as a full professor he teaches subjects from the New media art group at the Academy of Arts of the University of Banja Luka.
In the early stages of his artistic practice, he was involved in the international selection of artists under the age of 33 “Younger than Jesus – a directory of artists” by the curators of the New Museum in New York Laura Hoptman and Massimiliano Gioni, he participated in the 55th Venice Biennale, the 15th Video Biennale in Busan and recently the 13th Cairo Biennale among other group exhibitions. His solo exhibitions and projects were at MUMOK – Vienna, MC Gallery – New York, ACB Gallery – Budapest, Antje Wachs Gallery – Berlin, Nova Gallery Graz and many others.
His conceptual and often proactive approach questions his own environment and living conditions: on the one hand, his work is influenced by the experience of growing up during the war and its consequences in a destroyed, impoverished, ethnically and territorially divided and externally isolated country. On the other hand, it is his formal education (Military School of Reserve Officers and work in the gravestone workshop). The consequences of the war and the knowledge gained in the military school form the basic reference area of his creativity as an artist. From primary training as a painter, he now combines performative and conceptual strategies into a pluralistic, socially engaged and subversive approach to contemporary art. In this approach, art is not a goal, but more used as a tool.