Nikola Radosavljević.
Radosavljević Nikola, was born in 1991 in Užice, Serbia. He completed his undergraduate and master studies at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, printmaking and book arts department, in 2015. He received his PhD from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 2020, on the topic of artists’ books and new media graphic practices. With the editor of the art program of DKSG, New Belgrade, Maida Gruden, he organized an international cultural exchange of art books with the University of Arts in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, which resulted in a series of exhibitions, lectures and workshops on books by artists and border graphic practices, 2015-2017. From this cooperation, the first international student biennial of artists’ books in the region was formed (2018, 2020), which aims to popularize new media graphic practices and examine border graphic disciplines.
One of the founders of the graphic workshop “Graphic Cooperative”, the first public printing studio for artistic graphics in Vojvodina, a project supported by the Goethe Institute in Belgrade, MKI RS and the City Secretariat for Culture of Novi Sad, 2020.
He has won more than twenty awards and recognitions in the field of drawing and graphics, including the Contribution Plaque, World Biennial of Drawing, Osten, Macedonia, 2017. Award of the World Triennial of Small Format Graphics for technological contribution and art domain, Urals, Russia, 2019. Award of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, Gallery of the Graphic Collective, Exhibition of Small Graphics, 2019. First prize of the International Biennial of Graphics in Skopje, DLUM Gallery, Macedonia, 2020.Diego Donati Award Finalist, Ada Donati Foundation, Italy, 2020 (the award is given biennially to the most successful graphic artist under the age of 35 worldwide). Representative of Serbia at the International Triennial of Graphics in Krakow, Poland, and the Triennial of Graphics in Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2020.
He has participated in more than one hundred and fifty collective exhibitions in the country and abroad (Netherlands, Germany, Argentina, China, Switzerland, Russia, Nepal, Macedonia, Hungary, USA, India, Greece, Colombia, Bulgaria…).
So far, he has organized thirty-five solo exhibitions by competition and invitation (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Pančevo, Sombor, Kotor, Subotica, Kikinda (…).
Scholars from several different funds. Participant of the graphic colony “Grafika 2016” and “Grafika 2018”, Center for Culture Smederevo. Finalist of the SUPERSTE club in the field of visual arts, Erste Bank Foundation for 2014.
IG: stepski_zvuk
Mommy lessons
2021-ongoing / audio MP3, 00:10:29 / Audio work with watermark in drypoint printed on paper form copper matrix
Through my work, I tend to explore the dominant social structures that teach us what it means to be a “desirable citizen”, but also how to get there. Under the metaphor of the prism of the family home, I strive to turn out sociological and sociopathic narratives as the results of educational and didactic policies, seen as potential scenarios for the future.
When I was a kid there was that sentence:,,A male child should eat well, be healthy, and die for it’s country if it’s needed“.
Mom used to say it to me while I was growing up, not being aware of what dying is and why any country would need a dead child.
Audio project ,,Mommy lessons“ explores reflections of childhood trauma, spoken to every single male child during the period of 1990-1999. Whole region was infected with wars of opposite political tides, and boys were raised to be soldiers, or defenders at least. Death was something inevitable for all of us.
This was the first sentence that I gathered, out of nine of them, that shows rough and oppressive dictation from the closest person-mother, to a male child. I translated the sentence using simple audio code, Google translator audio, to every language known to Google. Bringing all those samples together, work shows a cacophony of female voices in a generic approach, speaking to listeners like echoes or like lullaby. Original was written in cyrilic, national letter in Serbia, but audio gathers all parts of the world together (or at least what Google sees as a world for now). This way, one primal and intimate relationship between my Mother and me reflects universal law of closeness and trust, no matter how suicidal it can be.
Work tends to spread further- by translating all fourteen sentences and bringing them out, the next step in the project is a simple Audio CD, named ,,Lullaby“. Every sentence will be composed out of audio samples form Google translate, composed as a lullaby for a children, so that even today when the wars on Balkanian peninsula stopped, somewhere, every Mom can bring their male child into sleep wit this dominant proclamations of modern society that raises children only to be flesh in global movements.
Some of the further sentences that are approaching:
,,You can be whatever you want in your life, as long as you don’t shame your mother and father“.
,,It’s better for you to be a murderer, drug addict or a thief, than to be a faggot“.
,,If you don’t eat everything, your mother will die“.
,,Who didn’t die for his own country, does not know what he lived for“.
,,Boys can cry, as long as nobody sees you“.
,,A child does not need a dead parent“.
etc