The Roots of Small Fires

The exhibition weaves together personal narratives, material memory, and the complex historical and cultural dynamics of Southeast Europe. It also reflects a broader mission: to strengthen the region's cultural capital by building sustainable connections between artists, institutions, and shared expertise.

Milica Živković presents a large-scale installation of newly created works. Motifs from "The Roots of Small Fires" have accompanied the artist for several years, but here they are transferred into a new phase of her artistic practice.

Several motifs in the installation presented here refer in abstract form to the experience of returning to a place associated with ambivalent feelings, but also with resilience. The shimmering silver fabrics that serve as a painting surface allude to the pompous aesthetics of turbo-folk. This musical style, often associated with nationalism and the Yugoslav Wars, shapes Živković's memories of her childhood as a kind of background noise. The fabrics feature abstract, root-like forms that resemble gestures of uprooting and rooting. The paintings on the fabrics do not remain flat and confined within a defined frame in the conventional sense, but rather expand into the space – like roots that do not cling inextricably to the ground, but strive forward.

In "The Roots of Small Fires," visitors move across a stage of remembrance, a place on the threshold between the past and the future—an interplay of light and its absence.

The exhibition was realized by the UNIQA SEE FUTURE Foundation: Mentorship Program for Visual Artists in collaboration with artist and mentor Šejla Kamerić, Nomad – Croatian Office for Contemporary Art, Nomarts – Kunstverein zur Schaffung von Kunstsammlungen, and the MuseumsQuartier Wien. Most of the works presented were created during Milica Živković's two-month stay as MQ Artist-in-Residence in Vienna.

Curated by Astrid Peterle.