In the Name of Mother,
In the Last Name of Father
2024
Multimedia project (film, installation, performance)
Solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, North Macedonia︎︎︎
Balkan Art Scene, Interview (English)︎︎︎
‘’In the Name of Mother, in the Last Name of Father’’ follows two brides to the place where tradition meets contemporary life of marriage as resistance rather than a social norm. It examines artist’s inheritance from both parents, proposing a new feminist strategy.
The project gathers several pieces, including the video piece ‘’The Bride’’︎︎︎, which documented two marriage processes in Serbia, and Germany. Investigating the issue of the last name as heritage, a tool to resist and locate, the piece includes talkies with the artist’s mother and her mother, while recording it in the form of an interview, questionnaire, spontaneous chat, and storytelling. The mothers and daughters are preparing for the ceremony which includes choosing the bridal dresses, asking questions about the fathers, entering long and complex bureaucratic procedures, making decisions, and sharing.
‘’In your Name’’︎︎︎ is a performance by the artist and her mother, where two brides perform the letters and adressing the intergenerational female bonding though the female line of the family.
Decisions to marry, divorce, and remarry arise from various factors such as legal, social, emotional, economic, political, practical, and romantic. For some of these reasons, in the year 2024, the artist is marrying a person with a different nationality, while her mother remarried and changed the previous husband's last name after 30 years. The act of both literally and metaphorically abandoning their last name—the sole inheritance from the artist’s biological father—becomes a radical decision. The process of marriage becomes an exploration of marriage as an intergenerational act within the family, delving into desires, societal norms, and the complex bureaucratic procedures involved in these actions.
The implementation of the project is kindly suppoted by the Creative Europe - Individual Mobility Fund (EU and Goethe-Institute)
