Milena Popov - Nena, PhD

Springtime is Coming

This short video talks about the notions of privacy, identity and boundaries. It wonders what is the criterion to be feminine and who sets that criterion. Femininity is a construct that binds a woman to the practice of contemporary rituals of beautification, such as shaving. From a ‘bare life’ we have arrived to a bare body - shaved body.

Non-Conversation

The video ends as it starts - abruptly. It is a short window - a voyeuristic look through a keyhole into conversations that can be heard but not understood, and the image that can be seen but not recognized. It is a metaphor for contemporary human society in which inability to communicate is ever present in spite of (and as byproduct of) technological (media) acceleration. The conversations fade away as coral reefs.

Close Your Eyes and See

The video is a meditation as a new direction, as a resistance, finding a solution/answers within oneself. It also represents a play of light one sees when closes eyes (the rhythm of one’s heart, or aura), as a light that comes after darkness. What our world (our planet) now needs is a complete mind shift, an ethical shift. The sound in the video is inspired by buddhist monk chanting.

Internal Ocean

An imaginary ocean journey that first revels a network that resembles bleached coral reefs and an oil spill, accompanied with an eery sound that resembles weeping whales. As the video progresses and one more closely observe, bleached coral reef-like imagery starts to more resemble damaged human inner organs. Ultimately, every human action has a reaction. Climate change and pollution damages humans too.

Fluctuations

The video evokes walk through an enchanted forest in which fog is exchanged for smog. Landscape images are intersected with lung X-ray-like images. Breading is obstructed in this polluted landscape. Even the patches of sunlight that managed to come trough once in a while, resemble more smog’s haze or nuclear explosion light rather than healthy sunlight.

Four Conversations

In this quadriptych of video paintings, human potential of being one with nature, or intellectual and spiritual growth is told via four conversations. These conversations with oneself or four states of mind can be named: Reeds and Wind, Love or Predators and Prays, Blooming Season, and Clouds. Human hands become brushstrokes that show transformation that starts with exercises in flexibility (inspired by Rumi’s poem on reeds and tai chi algae-wave mind and body exercises) and ends with acceptance of laws of nature.

Third Eye Observing the Anthropocene

This video explores the rhythm of the Anthropocene, a relentless rhythm that instead of stopping or slowing down, it is accelerating. Processed through this unnatural rhythm, even natural landscape becomes visual pollution. This frantic rhythm is juxtaposed with a still, halo-like eye. The third eye observes the Anthropocene in a meditative solitude.

Sparkles

In the ocean of life, billions of water droplets will flow by, but only some will manage to spark. Sparkles shine and continue their play in spite of constantly present pollution that tries to obliterate the play. And, as the play goes on, would we dare to become one of the sparkles? If we do not, do we care at all?

Metropolis

Inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the video tells a story about our technocratic society where entire life is mediated through technology. In the matrix of our glittering techno world humans become info-grazing cows, Wilém Flusser noted, cyborgs that can no longer separate themselves from digital technological tools (and attachments) that dictate their desires, movements, decisions…

Spiral Down

The outcomes of journeys are unknown. Sometimes the life seems to be spiraling down. But, if one takes a time to observe each step along the way, one might be able to grasp the meaning of the journey. And thus, instead of hitting the bottom, one might reach a freedom.

Forgotten Landscapes

This trilogy is an exploration of landscapes that look as forgotten as the mythological beings that formed and inhabited them according to ancient beliefs. For the full aesthetic experience of nature, as Berleant pointed out, one need to observe nature with all senses at once. Nowadays, even though some of these landscapes people visit as tourists attractions, while being constantly distracted with their cell phone screens, music, chat, and selfies, people rarely take the time to observe natural world with all senses. While walking through these ancient landscapes, if one does take the time and closely observe their unique geological features, endemic flora and fauna, as well as listening to wind, waves and bird songs, one can perhaps hear the voices of fairies, see the footprints of giants, and experience the magic of wizards.

Four Seasons

6 videos, color, sound, 2021

In this series of videos that follows seasonal changes in my family garden, I collaborated with my parents. The series is inspired by traditional East Asian paintings of four seasons. Seasonal changes not only symbolize the life cycle (and other cyclical systems that exist in the universe), but also virtues of the natural world that can cultivate one’s mind if one is open for learning.

Each video starts with a haiku poem by Matsuo Basho.

Solution-Dissolution

video, color, sound, 2022

This short animated video artwork follows a journey through a desolate landscape that at the same time resembles a landfill, melting glaciers, and an alien planet. In either way, human footprint is the one that makes changes in this environment.

Copyright © 2024 Milena Popov - Nena. All rights reserved.

Landscape Painted With Tea: Communication With Nature

Various teas on paper, different sizes, 2015-present

As my other recent paintings, this series of paintings is an investigation in something I call 'natural painting' or 'eco painting' - a painting that uses pigments that do not pollute the environment. These watercolors depict maps, natural world, and most often calligraphic writing (in a non-existent language). As Song dynasty’s Chinese calligraphers Su Shi in "Picking Raspberry" and Cai Xiang in "Letter About Tea" admired nature, and Wang Xizhi in "Letter to Express Worries and Indignation Toward the Destruction of an Ancestral Tomb" and Yan Zhenqing in "Draft Eulogy for a Nephew" expressed their sadness and anger, in these painting series I too express both admiration for nature and worries toward the ongoing ecological crisis (in particular issues such as biodiversity loss and rising sea levels). Landscape Painted With Tea borrows its name from a novel by Milorad Pavic of the same title. 

Paradise Lost: 6th Extinction

9 paintings, homemade organic cranberry syrup on paper, 2016-ongoing

Homemade cranberry syrup in this series depicts bleeding animals highly threatened by extinction, such as African Elephant, Black Rhino, Hawksbill Turtle, Pangolin, Galapagos Penguin, Tiger, Sumatran Orangutan, etc. As blood, cranberry syrup on these paintings goes through natural processes and changes from bright shiny bright red color to coagulated dark red and then rotting brown. Thus, these paintings are in ongoing state as the current 6th extinction. (The color changes on the paintings are recorded in photographs once a year; the last picture shown here is taken in 2020).

With continuous biodiversity loss due to climate change, deforestation, urbanization, pollution, poaching, resource-ism and speciesism, our society is causing the 6th extinction, as Kolbert noted in her recent book. More than 90% of the fisheries are gone, 96 elephants are killed per day, and over 32000 other species are now threatened with extinction.

Are we aware of this ecocide? Do we care? What do we do? Anthropocene humans prefer to distance and disassociate themselves from reality, nature, including animals. In this Cartesian dualism, animals thus, no longer being ‘one of us’ became the Other, the resource, the case. Along plants, this Other exists to mere fulfill human desires (food, clothing, companionship, entertainment, aesthetic and exotic display, scientific study, etc).

Paradise Lost: Out Of The Picture

9 paintings, organic black tea on paper, 24x18 inches each, 2017/18-ongoing

Reminiscing colonialism and Otherness, imported black tea in this series portrays animal species that are almost completely left ‘out of the picture’. As yellowish brown hues of the tea (being a natural pigment) fade away over the years, animal portraits gradually disappear as old photographs in a forgotten book.

What happens when songs of many birds remain only as an archival recording, Lonesome Georges as just preserved last specimens in museums, and Global South as an exotic winter tourist destination that daily losses its ‘exotic charm’ (becoming more global - more of the same smog-filled urban dwelling)? Both Gandhi and Lincoln noted the treatment of animals as a sign of how healthy society is. Would humans in their ignorance face dodo fate too? Perhaps the current Covid-19 pandemic would be a wake-up call, so other animal species and humans would not be left out of the picture.

Purple Rain

9 paintings, gouache and dish washing liquid on paper, 9x12” each, 2020

This artwork series is one of my explorations of calligraphic brush strokes that morph into graffiti-like and organic forms. A close look reveals a texture that resembles microscopic images of cells or other biological levels of organization. Dishwashing liquid breaks down the paint pigment as a virus or tumor that eats up the cells or organs, or perhaps as a fungus that eats a dead matter. The images are mysterious as many unknowns and uncertainties humanity is facing now in the time of rapid technological developments (including various genetic experiments) on the one side, and the complex global ecological crisis on the other side (including climate change, deforestation, and wildlife trade-induced pandemics).

Premonition

6 paintings, ink on paper, 12x9” each, 2019/2020

In this dream-like scenery that resembles sonogram images, whirlpools or eyes of hurricanes magnified by climate change and black lace-like waves colored by oil spills, a dark organisms emerge.

Self-Portrait During Pandemic

ink on paper, 12x10”, 2020

Buzzing Calligraffitti

4 paintings, acai juice, sumi ink, blue watercolor, color pencils on paper, 3x12”, 5x12”, 10x3”, 10x12”, 2020

These paintings are a bridge between calligraphy and graffiti, as well as a bridge between nature and city. The work represent a unity in difference, at the same time a global cultural unity and a unity where non-human and human nature coexist in harmony. The urgency to achieve ecological sustainability, as well as global unity is more evident than ever.

Between Water and Fire: Birth of a Demon

9 paintings, ink and gauche on paper, 12x9” each, 2020

After several hurricanes, flooding came from the left side and fires from the right side. In the center of the storm created by floating pollution, a demon was formed. This demon created the Anthropocene - a new era filled with various destructions that resulted in the planetary ecological crisis…

Rhythm of the Anthopocene

9 paintings (9x12”, gouache and pastel), video, sound (0:28min; ), 2020

This multimedia installation is mixing landscape painting with the rhythm of the Anthropocene. In this fast-paced rhythm where everything is instant, neither one has a time to observe a landscape, nor to observe a painting. The speed of an observer looking at a raw of paintings hang on a wall mirrors the speed of a rider observing a landscape from a moving train. Besides the rhythm uncontrollable by a rider, this landscape observation is also interrupted by obstructive sound mash of human and machine noises (train engines, cell-phones, human voices, etc.), as well as trees and smudges on a window that get in a way of a perfect, clear view. However, in the rhythm of the Anthropocene, they are not obstructions that ruin the perfect view, but rather necessary components that make the reality real, a distinct touch of the contemporaneity – a new type of picture perfect.

Looking at a cold winter landscape from a warm comfort of a diesel moving train mirrors human disconnection with nature and human ignorance of Anthropogenic effects on nature (and entire life on the Planet). Caught on this ride, passengers of the Anthropocene are not seeing where they are heading to. Even when the ice cracks and breaks (“outside”), it would not be heard from the palimpsest of Anthropocenic noises…

Celestial Battles: Birth of the Universe

This mythologically inspired series of 20 paintings consists of diptychs, triptychs, and quadriptychs painted predominantly with teas and fruit juices.

Digital Calligraffitti

This is an ongoing series of digital paintings that started at the end of 2023.

Digital Calligraffitti: Conversation in a Metaphisycal Space

Digital painting series, 2024

Copyright © 2024 Milena Popov - Nena. All rights reserved.

Side View

Two-channel video installation, video, color, sound, 4 min, 2008 

This video installation shows some images of our time without direct comments, thus taking a kind of critical distance as a characteristic sort of a “side view.”  Urban spaces contain metaphoric and psychological meanings. Everyone sees the world on a specific way. What is the relation between language and understanding, thinking and image? Where lies a truth and where  a fantasy?

Garden of Eden

Multimedia installation, oil on board (11x18 inches), video, color, sound (30 sec), red apple, 2013

(The painting and the video of an Adam’s apple (in a loop) are positioned on opposite walls, while the real apple is positioned in between them. In the background the repetitive sound of biting and chewing an apple is heard).

The installation questions the following relations: active-passive, male-female, reason-emotion, as traditional categories, distinctions, characteristics, and descriptions of genders embedded even in the contemporary societies. The truth, in this case real apple is somewhere in between. In today’s busy, alienated world where virtual reality is more and more real Reality, the gaps between genders do not seem to be the above mentioned culturally constructed differences, but alienation itself. The contact in this modern world seems to remain only virtual (metaphorically and literally). So, in this ‘cyber Garden of Eden’ the real “bite” is non existent, making this garden a Real - true Garden of Eden. Desire stands still on a pedestal, untouched, away from reach – unfulfilled.

Inertia

Sound-art, sound, 4.25 min, 2013

Voice: Milena Popov - Nena (texts read: H.G.W. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit), Jack Kerouac, Su la strada (On the Road), “Zakon inercije”(“Law of inertia”) from G. Dimic, M. Pecic, B. Boskovic, D. Basic, Fizika 7.)

Sound and sound mix: Harper J. Sibley

The project explores the law of inertia and the movement through different sound sensibilities of different language (Serbian, Italian, German), bridging them through monotonous reading and universality of a physical law. Wave soundscapes and monotonous narration suggest the meditative character of inertia, in constant motion. The narrative depicts the utopian aspiration of bodies for a constant, linear, steady movement, which as life itself, inevitably faces constant obstacles that alter its course, delocalize it, or stop it. In the life that is in constant motion, like yin and yang, like the universe, in constant change, our environment constantly acts upon us and we constantly act upon the environment. This yin - yang balancing or, ambivalence of movement is like Hegel's dialectic of the spirit, which, according to this dialectic (law), is a set of opposites and relationships: human body/mind - environment/nature, finite - infinite, universal - particular, local - global. 

Bringing Hidden Into View: Drowning in Plastic

Interactive multimedia installation, bags of recycling trash, color video (2min), poster sign, 2014

Genesis

Multimedia installation, 7 color photographs (5x7 inches), color video (0.47 min; 2012), petri dish filled with soil and artificial hair, few old books, several paper documents, 2019

The installation resembles archival documentation of a lost specie. Undated photographs and film recording leave the viewer to ponder who unidentified species are. Are they post apocalyptic humans, or products of a secret biogenic experiment, or a result of a survival of the fittest? These creatures crawl on their hands and feet, and fight for survival in a hazy environment that is exhausted by exploitation, pollution, and climate change.

Rhythm of the Anthopocene

Multimedia installation, 9 paintings (9x12”, gouache and pastel), video and sound (0:28min), 2020

In the fast-pace rhythm of the Anthropocene, where everything is instant, neither one has a time to observe a landscape, nor to observe a painting. The speed of an observer looking at a raw of paintings hang on a wall mirrors the speed of a rider observing a landscape from a moving train. Besides the rhythm uncontrollable by a rider, this landscape observation is also interrupted by obstructive sound mash of human and machine noises (train engines, cell-phones, human voices, etc.), as well as trees and smudges on a window that get in a way of a perfect, clear view. However, in the rhythm of the Anthropocene, they are not obstructions that ruin the perfect view, but rather necessary components that make the reality real, a distinct touch of the contemporaneity – a new type of picture perfect.

Once Upon a Time

4 sound art works, 2020/21

Voice and sound mix: Milena Popov

Lichen Covered Rocks, 37 sec, link

Ferns in a Forest, 49 sec, 2020, link

Damp Moss, 30 sec, 2020, link

Flexible Algae, 36 sec, 2021, link

This sound art series illustrates species I like very much - fungi, mosses, ferns, and algae - species that favor moist and darker (mysterious) environments and have inhabited this planet for such a long time. They always transport me into a fairytale, into a fuller experience of a place.

Copyright © 2024 Milena Popov - Nena. All rights reserved.

Metamorphosis

Photo-projection, digital photographs, site specific installation of found objects, size varies - space specific, 2007

The photo installation is based upon specific pictures of the reality, tragedy and banality of our time, time of the Anthropocene, where nature has metamorphosed into a non-nature, ‘urban nature.’ In this metamorphosis ‘Daphne’ did not transform into a ‘bay laurel’, but exactly opposite, the ‘bay laurel’ has transformed into ‘Daphne.’

Urban spaces contain metaphoric and psychological meanings, moral as well as aesthetic. This work explores apocalyptic looking spaces, which people do not see, do not want to see, or most likely think of them as an urban accent,  an edge, (a charm of junk aesthetics), oppose to a ‘sterile’ place.  

Chat With Pauline

Photo installation,  3 digital photograph diptychs, color, 110x50 cm each, 2007 by the group Aufwiedersehen

Paolina Borghese as Venus by Antonio Canova has inspired this artwork, that makes a parallel between past and present in regards to female beauty and position of women in art and society. In this photo-installation artists represent present-day Venus that are finding their relaxation and everything else in a chat via cellphones/computers, starring into screens of their TV's/computers/web cameras, and drinking alcohol for better relaxation. Nowadays, when fast consumer habits, reality shows, estranged relationships, and strong media exploitation of female bodies dominate the reality, what are the ideals of present-day Venus?

Box

Photo projection, 25 digital color photographs, 2008 by Aufwiedersehen

This photo serial is exploring the complexity of our tragical reality, the fact that humans have lost the connection with their true Selves. With this in mind, people are alienated from nature as well… Even when they are in nature, they do not see the very bit of it: how nature unfolds its life effortlessly, without stress. It seems like people live now in some kind of surrealism, or even parallel reality.

Box is a metaphor for “square mind-ness” as inability to recognize the reality, its causes, and consequences. Godot is not coming. We have to open our boxes ourselves!

Dobrodošli/Dovidjenja, Welcome/Good bye, Willkommen/ Aufwiedersehen

Photo projection, 10 digital photographs, color, 2008 by Aufwiedersehen

The artwork deals with notions of borders, identity, existence, migrations, signs and their meanings. What is a border? When entering a country, a town, or a village, there are greeting signs to welcome you, and signs wishing you a nice trip and saying good bye when exiting. When one crosses a border, is one really welcome? Who is welcome and who is not? Transitions, wars, economic recession, and climate disasters force people to migrate. What is one’s identity? How are borders constructed? Are borders outside or inside ourselves?

Two Angels For Charlie

Photo projection, 10 digital photographs, color, 2010 by Aufwiedersehen

From the time of America's "golden age" of 1950s, the American dream of eternal beauty, fame and material wealth is transferred through the globalization to the entire world. Marilyn Monroe as a personification of this dream, with her artificial platinum blonde hair and bright red lipstick became a symbol of female sex appeal and femininity in general. Like the faceless stars of show business today, artists hide behind Marilyn Monroe mask. In the form of old Hollywood posters and other advertisements, women are presented as smiling ‘beauties.’ These “angels” are willing to do everything for "Charlie" - be at the same time fragile seductresses, businesswomen, hardworking housewives. Under the influence of mass media, women are expected to follow fashion and technology of its time, but also established and well-proven models of femininity. In the modern era of artificial consumer society, the value of good packaging is crucial. Did constant posing become the most present phenomenon of our time? Who is behind the fake smiles?

Tied

Photo projection, 9 digital photographs, color, 2010 by Aufwiedersehen

 Contemporary world, ruled by large international corporations, looks as if has become a large corporation itself, governed by principles of the market. In such a society, an artist is forced to be a homo oeconomicus, because the art market itself is a corporation in which the sexism is still present, as in other corporations. Therefore, female artists are double tied with ties - a symbol of corporate power and male supremacy. As the ‘world's eyes’ are ‘tied’ with market’s games, ordinary people do not see unscrupulous and non transparent exploitation that occurs in the unstoppable speculative game of the capital. The rules in this game are not transparent. The imposed lifestyle is presented as the only possible life - a 'normal' life, even 'natural'. Therefore, an ordinary person does not see a way out, or necessity for getting out of of this lifestyle, which chief Seattle called ''the end of living and the beginning of survival.'' In this 'survival' money determines everything, and represents the backbone of life and the measure of all things. A human has become Worholian machine, producer of capital, whose all areas of life (education, marriage, profession, children, etc.) are used for production of capital.

Teleportation

Photo projection, 10 digital photographs, color, 2011 by Aufwiedersehen

As a reminiscence of the old science fiction movies, the artist are teleported with symbols from art history into another time. Opening the vortex of time in the form of gradual formation of a golden mean spiral, not only the symbols and values of the past and future are interlaced, but also high and low culture, old and new technology - questioning the art as an institution. With quick teleportation of digital data, contemporary artists often time travel while borrowing artworks from other epochs. Many questions arise from these teleportations.

Cocktail: Breakfast at Tiffany`s

Photo-projection, 2 digital photographs, color, 2010 by Aufwiedersehen

This work jokes about VIP parties and celebrity guests that pose for paparazzi and dress to be noticed. Paparazzi and jet set are circle that represents the public life without serious duties, a life as an entertainment. In this bubbly “la vie en rose” everything is for a show, from styling to statements. Nothing is left to chance. Relationships, successes and failures are all part of the game. The end - profit justifies the means. In order to maintain their place in the media and fans’ heartsThey have to be present everywhere and give statements even when they have nothing to say. If they fail to entertain the audience 24/7 by dominating gossip pages, media will easily replace them with the next “hot thing.”

Red & Black

Photo projection, 5 digital photographs, color 2012 by Aufwiedersehen

This artwork uses colors as symbols with all their relations, contrasts and meanings. While red stands for passion, blood, love, fire, and heart, black represents death, punishment, and sorrow, (as Kandinsky said, black is like nothing and without any possibilities, the eternal silence), and white color symbolizes capitulation as non existent peace, sorrow, and peace. By changing the positions of colors (on their bodies and body movements) artists change the color connotations.

Bridge here is at the same time a metaphor for connection/unity and a place where some unknown ‘opposites’ meet and clash, fight in passion constantly for the ideas that are not theirs and whose fight would benefit a third person, while they both lose. Therefore, white color is excluded from the title of this artwork. In the 21st century, we are still witnesses, on some level more than ever before, of wars, killings, fights, and other aggressions. Every civilized person asks: would humans evolve and stop fighting? But then, what means ‘civilized’ and what means ‘barbarian’? Is ‘barbarian’ the Other, whose constant production is needed, to benefit the One.

Picnic

Photo projection, 10 digital photographs, color, 2012

While the installation evokes Manet's "Breakfast on the Grass,” human figures in this artwork are two ladies, not two gentlemen, while a naked woman (or a naked man) is absent. Landscape is also not a sensual - lush romantic, dramatic landscape, but a parched landscape due to climate change. Figures in the installation wear 19th century-like hats, with faces covered in veils. Mystery of the characters (females) corresponds to mystery of the landscapes in which they are located. Popularity of 19th century picnics (escapes into nature under the growing industrialization and the rapid loss of nature), here is replaced by even more alienated contact with nature. Even when in nature, humans look (as in this artwork) as if being pasted there by Photoshop.

Access Denied

Photo projection, 15 digital photographs, color, 2012 by Aufwiedersehen

Photo-installation Access Denied examines how people today spend their time in the new reality called social network, not even taking into an account safeguarding of their personal, intimate data, and not taking into an account other adverse conditions arising from the use of these networks. On sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, on the one hand, users in their ‘profiles’ “hang” their personal data and their privacy, exhibiting them for the view of others, while on the other hand enjoy voyeuristically in the exhibited privacy of others. However, the questions is- what people really get from this enjoyment?

Copyright © 2012 Milena Popov - Nena and group Aufwiedersehen. All rights reserved.

Biotransformation

Photo-installation (40x30”) and projection, 90 digital photographs, color, 2016

With this series of photo “paintings” artist started to use photo camera for a microscopic-like explorations of natural and man-made environments, as both introspective and meditative tool. In this artwork one natural form ones zoomed in, transforms or morphs into another natural form (often another organism or inner organs). Blurring air brush-like texture further evokes to blurring destination and thus similarities between different organisms, calling for Oneness.

Terra Incognita

Photo-installation and photo projection, 9 digital photographs, color, 11x14 inches each, 2017

This installation is a continuation of my exploration of details in nature, in this case decayed tree barks. Here, almost microscopically zoomed in decayed bark evokes decayed, dislocated, (a)stranged land. This bruised land, stripped of vegetation might be deserted and left in a state of entropy because of aggressive, toxic mining processes or because of desertification. Hidden from the views of a general public it unmapped in a way. The unknown, distanced moon-like landscape becomes the Other. However, with worldwide expansion of more than ever aggressive mining processes, terra incognita is growing and will sooner or later becomes a reality everyone will need to face.

Rhapsody in Green

Photo-installation/projection, digital photographs, color, 2017

Chype (Let’s Have a Tea Via Skype)

Photo projection, digital photographs, color, 2016-present

This ongoing photo-installation of screenshots notes precious moments of communication between friends and family members. With busy lifestyles and migrations, often, the only means to communicate with loved ones is via technology, such as Skype. This communication is very often disrupted (followed by distorted image)… During the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns in place, the only mean to communicate with other people was via digital technologies. This artwork that started in 2016 become a premonition of the situation during the pandemic, but also the current situation where big part of our lives (work, school, exercising, entertainment, socializing, dating, etc) is happening via Skype, Zoom and similar platforms.

Copyright © 2024 Milena Popov - Nena. All rights reserved.

“Beating A Dead Horse”

Performance, 45 min., 1997/2004 and multimedia installation, 2012 by the group Aufwiedersehen

This artwork has 3 different stages. It is created initially as a 45 min. performance in 1997, as a commentary on the political situation in Yugoslavia/Serbia at that time. In 2004 this performance changed appearance, while in 2012 it turned into a multimedia installation that consists of photo documentation of performances from 1997 and 2004, with addition of projected slides with questions pertinent to the current situation in the art world. Visitors are given opportunity to post their answers to these questions on the exhibit’s social media page as part of the installation.

Copyright © 2014 Group Aufwiedersehen. All rights reserved.

Rain Dots

Sound-Video Art, music, color video, 4:42 min., 2014, sound-link

Rain Dots is the collaboration between music group Majamisty TriO (Maja Alvanovic, Istvan Cik, Ervin Malina) and art group Aufwiedersehen (Milena Popov - Nena and Ksenija Kovacevic). This Sound Art piece was inspired by a spring forest rain. The work is an evocation of a total immersion in the sublime beauty of nature, a sense of happiness and peace of mind. As Maja Alvanović, composer and leader of the group Majamisty TriO said: "The melody imitates raindrops, full of melodic leaps, and placed in the unusual rhythmic changes using odd Balkan rhythms, all of this makes it light and restless; droplets are initially scattered are not uniform, and then appears rustling downpour and thunder in the middle part ... Everything finishes quickly, clears up, drops thin down and start to sing ... The whole composition evokes the peace of mind that I felt at that moment, protected from spring cuff by tall trees, surrounded by the smells and sounds, a gentleness and happiness, as little lucks appear suddenly, and for a couple of seconds you feel happiness without any special reason, but actually you come  to a contact with the real reason why you should always be happy - because you are alive, because you're here, because you're in the nature where is the easiest to feel this way."

Video follows the melody and feelings described. This carefree play in nature, play of colors and elements: water, air, smell. This immersion in nature with all senses is what Ronald Hepburn noted as necessary for the complete aesthetic experience of nature, and also for the understanding of the very essence of man as an inseparable part of nature - something that is increasingly lost in today's digital reality and ecological imbalance.

Copyright © 2023 Groups Aufwiedersehen and Majamisty TriO. All rights reserved.

Sacred Mountain

4-channel sound-video installation, 4 color videos, 5 speakers, sound, in progress

Waves

Series of 9 videos, color, sound, in progress

Painting With Water (work title)

Performance, in progress

Collaboration with Maja Alvanovic, musician and composer

Chopin Palipsests: Inscribed in Memory

multimedia ambient artwork: video projection, several semi-transparent curtains, live music, live dance, in progress

Music: Federico Mompou “Variations on a Theme of Chopin” played by Maja Alvanovic (musician and composer)

Video projection, stage design, and dance by Milena Popov - Nena

Synopsis:

In this interdisciplinary artwork that combines visual art with music and dance, video is projected onto layered semi-transparent curtains, the pianist and the dancer (that occasionally dances between the curtains) on stage, unifying them in a kind of gesamtkunstwerk. Appearance of both live and projected dancer, as well as occasional wind that moves the curtains and the projection further blurs distinction between the projected and the real, the impression and the reality. Layered curtains not only create a visual depth, but act as a metaphor for layered memories, emotions, experiences, and projected realities. Even though the dream-like imagery is initially inspired by a particular moment when Popov’s has danced on Chopin’s music in a Venetian villa overlooking canal Grande, the ambient artwork is a dialog between Mompou’s, Alvanovic’s, and Popov’s impressions of Chopin.

Awarded Contemporary Art Grant from the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Novi Sad, Novi Sad (Serbia) in July 2020, for the production costs.

Meeting Dostoyevsky

Multimedia installation (old chair and lamp, photo projection, sound, text), in progress

IcoN - Noci - aNeN

video trilogy, color, sound, in progress

Copyright © 2024 Milena Popov - Nena. All rights reserved.