Milica Tomić with Ana Bezić
2.12.2023 - 3.2.2024
AR/GE - KUNST, Bolzano
Curated by Zasha Colah and Francesca Verga
Produced by Stefano Riba
Research painting in collaboration with Philipp Sattler
We are very excited to announce this new exhibition by Milica Tomić, commissioned by ar/ge Kunst, the Bolzano Kunstverein.
Milica Tomić positions the site, specifically soil (both what it contains and what it sustains), as the crucial and active agent in the process of knowledge formation. Looking at the soil as an archive, Tomić with the archaeologist Ana Bezić— both members of Grupa Spomenik (or Monument Group)—consider what appears as material evidence to reveal how weather, forest, agriculture, property regulations, everyday life, labour, class, and ethnicity are continuously superimposed onto each other.
The mud itself is on view, what is yet to be filtered and what has already been processed. A mechanical filtration system of tanks, pipes, and sieves—resembling the Ankara flotation tank system devised at the Can Hasan archaeological site in Turkey—containing emulsions of soil and water, in which the same water keeps circulating in a closed system, occupies the whole exhibition space. The soil, taken from specifically chosen locations in South Tyrol, will pass through the tank at repeating intervals over the months of the exhibition.
The exhibitionary act is condensed to a see-through cut or cross-section through the main filtration tank. It makes us privy to the section between the sieves catching flot: the floating particles less than 4 mm in size, and the residue at the base of the filtration cylinder where heavier matter will sink. Here, exhibiting means letting appear the thick opacity of matter, an emulsion of complexity, the fourth wall of the theatre onto a haze of spiralling soil—non- performing matter.
Exhibiting the un-sievable realm, this newly opened in-between space looks at matter that is not seen, potentially non-existent, possibly existent or even yet-to-be-imagined. It is a remainder that indicates what is left after a process or event. The non-identifiable reminder of what was hidden, overlooked or unconsidered. It is a surplus of debased matter, a material reminder that opens up a real space for the unknown. The artistic act is in looking for an appearance of a Political Subject—the viewer—in the soil-as-archive. In this way, the work that will be presented at Ar/Ge Kunst comes to speak of the continuities and discontinuities of any political truth.
Image Credit: Tiberio Sorvillo