Interview with artist Vladimir Nikolic from Serbia. Most readers will know his amazing and famous Autoportraits, but beside that, he is exhibiting all over the world, his amazing video installations and shortfilms earned him a solid reputation. Vladimir was kind enough to answer some questions:

The description of your crossword puzzle says that your intention is to be “a great artist, one that could become an item in primary school textbooks”, a quite ambitious approach… Do you think this should be an artists vision and aim before showing his works to the public?

The Crossword work is auto-ironic. I was ironic about my ambitions at the very start of my career. At the moment I still didn’t know if I will ever have a career, I just finished art school.

So admitting my deep ambitions at the very start seemed fair to me. I was thinking like this - in the next 20 - 30 - 40 years, I will make who knows how many art works, tell lot of stories, etc, but why am I devoting my life time to it?

The answer was obvious to me. Once I exposed that fact - I felt free to open my self to any subject, without feeling the pressure of ambition so much.

The crossword puzzle was your way to skip the procedure of becoming a great artist. You placed yourself as the solution of a puzzle with the question: “Name of a great artist”… Was it the first work, that put yourself on the cultural landscape?

This was my first work, yes, and this fact gives meaning to the work.

If I would make this work today, or as a 3rd, 5th or after any other work, it would be nothing more but self-loving act.

Some of your earlier works are self-orientated, the puzzle, parking place and the autoportraits, is there any coherence between your aims as artist and this fact?

Actually, only the puzzle is self oriented. The Parking Place is about the place/position of the contemporary artist in the society, his visibility in everyday life, the need for an artist per se. Autoportraits - that’s not the story about me as an artist. Its about us, our emotions and how we project ourselves on the material world around us.

Death Anniversary deals with the meaning of your art, often mistakenly seen in a context with your origin. On the other side, your autoportraits made its way through the anonymous bloggosphere…. What does it mean to you, when people from all over the world are just loving the result of your work, without interpretation, etc.?

Good question. The problem is in interpretation - who is holding the key of it? Most of the time you will see my work through the eye of the institution which presents my work. Where is institution - there is politic.

Of course, politic is everywhere, but that is not the issue here. So, the institution is creating the context and my work is usually re-shaped by interpretation to fit into these contexts and politics. 8 years after I made Autoportraits, someone published them on the website (www.vvork.com) without any explanation and interpretation.

So people were free to see it with their own eyes and to enjoy in pure idea. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that art can work without interpretation, that curators should vanish, etc.

The problem emerge when you are coming from a ‘different’ country like me and you become a victim of ‘lower’ types of interpretations which are constructing the meanings out from geographical origin and raw politic, so no one can see you as an artist but as a ethno phenomena.

How did the idea for “Death Anniversary” emerge, and what were your first ambitions when creating this work?

This work talks about the problem you mentioned in the previous question. The work/idea came after few years of international exhibiting and seeing how my works were interpreted, presented to the audience - more as window to a different world than as art.

I already mentioned them: The Autoportraits are just pure fun…
Are you interested in cars?

Yes, pure fun, but I think people get more messages from this work, not just fun. And yes, I love cars, looovee them….

Did you shoot those pics randomly, or did you search for special cars, with expressive fronts?

Not randomly, there are cars with more character and less character, just like people. I picked ones with more character, more expression.

The more recent works seem to be a bit more complex and conceptional. What are your plans for the future, will there be more shortfilms, are there any new exhibitions in the near future?

You can’t draw a straight line between my works. If they are more conceptual now, that doesn mean they will stay that way.

Right now I am working on several new video works. I am preparing my solo show in Bologna, Italy at NT Gallery on 29th April, another solo show in gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade in October, and between are few international group shows around Europe.

Thank you for the detailed answers

Link: Vladimir Nikolic
Link: Autoportraits