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Bilyana artistic expression is similar
to pop art and contemporary realism. It is often said that
she’s "the biographer of time in which she lives, by showing
it through the female figuration." EXHIBITIONS Biljana Cincarević, the artist’s biography “What would you like to be when you grow up?” “I’d like to be free.” Already as a little girl, growing up in Belgrade, Serbia (then former Yugoslavia), Biljana Cincarević was a non-conformist. Although there was something comforting in the discipline required to be Marshall Tito’s pioneer (the communist version of Brownies), she knew from a young age that compliance with the rule of the majority was not a life for her. Followed the years of teenage rebellion, listening to local new wave (a hip local genre that emerged in the early 1980s), rock n’ roll and aspiring to Western values. Then came the 90s, a decade of war, devastation, raging nationalism and total destruction of any moral codes, following the collapse of Yugoslavia. Biljana enrols on a course at Belgrade’s Academy of Fine Arts and finds refuge in art. Education within a depressive political system coupled with economic sanctions leaves a lot for wanting but scarcity can also be a driver. An optimist by nature, Biljana makes the best of meagre resources. She turns what she considers to be a deficiency in her own education system - namely encouraging function over creativity, a left-over motto from communism - into an advantage and she learns how to ‘properly’ paint. In her own time and for a period of around 5 years (in parallel with the University course), she takes a deep interest in religion, spirituality and even some aspects of quantum physics. After graduation in 1998, inspired by all the notions of ultimate moral codes addressed in her literature, she considers becoming a female monk, without any clear denomination. However, realising that she was much too young for incarceration, she goes the other way instead. She became a hedonist. It was sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. These two extremes, the nun-cum-whore, will become the foundation for her expression as an artist. Biljana speaks for all the sisters. Her paintings are ambiguous, depicting females that are both empowered and submitted, but her artistic voice is clear. It is a call for women’s emancipation in what Biljana considers a male dominated universe. She plays with stereotypes, sporting a blond bombshell look herself, only to turns those into a provocation. For, what she has to say is the anti-thesis of what the blond look connotes. In a society where girls aspire to marry footballers and gangsters, Biljana says you need to man. In a society where religion has been rediscovered only to be aligned with dubious moral values, Biljana claims you need no God. In fact, her performance art exhibition Lord Have Mercy (2009), where she accuses the Church of outright corruption, caused outrage among the establishment but it also gave Biljana some notoriety. She may be among the loudest but she is not a lone voice in Serbia, representing a new generation of artists who reject their country’s insular position, reaching out to the world. And, the world is ready for fresh blood from the ‘Balkans’. Think of Biljana not as someone who comes form a country of bloodshed, but as someone who comes from the same place as Marina Abramovich – a place where a new generation is preaching their own religion, that of tolerance and old-fashioned citizenship (simple values worth remembering in our era dominated by ‘bling’ art). Lida Hujic, London 2012 |
