Artist Marina Marković’s exhibition “The Arrangement(s)” represents the con- cluding part of a series of performanc- es focused on issues of power relations in the artworld. We spoke with the artist to discuss the current exhibition and her future career plans, but also her most memorable journeys. The Arrangement(s) is an exhibition that represents the final part of a se- ries of related performances. How did you come up with the initial idea for this series? “The Arrangement(s) is the culmination of a multi-year project focused on is- sues of power relations in the artworld, within the framework of the art mar- ket and institutional policies, but primar- ily power in relation to the female body. I launched the project during the pan- demic, by sending an agreement to the email addresses of almost all galleries, museums and institutions with which I’ve worked, offering parts of my body for tattooing their logo. The project later de- veloped into a series of live performanc-
es that I implemented across Europe. An arrangement of pink tattoos gradual- ly formed on my skin, which I wanted to provide with a theoretical framework. For the performance at MSUB, I invited four theoreticians/curators – Mattheu Le- lièvre, Daniele Capra, Lucrezia Nardi and Ješa Denegri – as well as the artist Or- lan, to provide their “interpretation” of the work on my skin, each from their own perspective. Exhibition curator Teodora Jeremić then used those texts to create a metatheoretical text, which was en- graved on my skin at the opening.” How important to you, and in what way, is the very act of tattooing at a perfor- mance, which we usually associate with an act of free will of the one being tattooed, but also with specific physi- cal pain? “I’ve spent more than a decade inscrib- ing various societal pressures on my skin in the form of pink tattoos. The skin is both internal and external, it has bound- aries, is ambivalent in nature, while at the same time it enables negotiations be-
tween us and surroundings. It is a place where freedom of choice meets the pres- sures of cultural power and the tensions of social control. Tattooing, thus, has a role in marking that unstable boundary and demonstrating the binary of the natural and the voluntary, the superficial and the internal, the discursive and the indicated. Feminist theory also recognises tattoo- ing as a method of reclaiming one’s body from society.” Which travels, cities or countries have special places in your memories? “There’s no moment that’s more mag- ical for me than when the plane leaves the ground. I’m a traveller by nature, and it sometimes seems to me that my home is just the place that I come to repack my bags. I’ll never forget the first time I flew over the Atlantic on my way to New York, where I “knew”, somewhere in the mid- dle of that vast blueness, that I wasn’t go- ing anywhere new, but rather returning. I spent years living between Belgrade and New York, and there’s nowhere that I feel more at home.
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