JELENA MICIC

www.jelenamicic.com

Urban Art Spot Burggasse 62, 1070 Wien

inside Burggasse 62:

Since 19 December 2018 single-use plastic was banned in the EU which continued with prohibition of the single-use plastic bags in January 2020. One of the top-listed environmentally hostile products on that cancel list are the cotton buds. Cotton swabs or Q-tips along with plastic bags and different sorts of plastic packaging are to be completely withdrawn from the market by the end of 2021. Market shelves are rapidly being impoverished from the plastic grip cotton buds, just to be increasingly replaced with sustainable materials such as paper and wood.

The arrival of cheap plastic replacements reshaped the economic conditions and because of the affordable price, people started accepting the material, as it positively affected their pockets. On the other hand, it had a tragic impact on the environment and general health. Nowadays, natural resource material - cotton buds from wood and paper - cost less than the plastic surrogates, which might be a motivating strategy, but also a market regulation which produces a new organic monopole, and all that for citizens with already supplied and secure basic human needs.

From the 2021 on single-use plastic is a forbidden material, and a targeted item of the future memory. The project follows the politics of the material available to many that for political reasons was purposefully led to extinction. We are witnessing a disappearance of a material, which, over the years became a fundamental and omnipresent matter also inside the human body. The plastics consumption process reveals underlying economic principles and we are left with a question – who could afford its disappearance?

Jelena Micić (*1986, Knjaževac) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2020) at the Textual sculpture class (Mentor Heimo Zobernig). MA in Philosophy (2012) and Graduated philologist of Scandinavian languages (2010) University of Belgrade. Awarded with Würdigungspreis der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien for Excellent Artistic Theses (2020), Ö1 Talentestipendium Bildende Kunst (2018) and kültür gemma! Fellowship (2018). Her works are in the Collection of the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport in Austria (Artothek des Bundes), Collection of the City of Vienna, Kupferstichkabinett der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna, The Homeland Museum in Knjaževac and private collections. Founder of the informal group UMETNIK*.
Lives and works in Vienna as a freelance artist and curator.

Text: Jelena Micic

gefördert durch den 7. Bezirk
Foto Credit: Urban Art Spots, Klemens Waldhuber, Jelena Micic