Inner circle …
Milena Dragicevic’s 2008 series of small, identically sized paintings, Supplicants, are based on photos of female friends. Yet they are not portraits. The Canadian-Serb artist has said that using a face was a “simple starting point” for a painting, like a circle on a canvas.
Let’s party …
What she creates, though, is far from the neutrality of a geometric shape. These are images that burrow deep under viewers’ skins. The muted, antique palette suggests a world outside of time. Her subjects are pale and shadowed: guests at a never-ending party for the undead.
Face pained …
They wear masks and face-paint: a beak here, but in other works, the rectangular thick red mouths familiar from Native American totem poles. Sometimes the face is obscured by a colourful abstract void.
A world away …
In spite of the mix of cultural references and styles, the paintings conjure their own universe into being. They could be seen as a comment on the status of painting now: declared dead, resurrected, indefatigable.
