"The ideal city is probably something we carry within ourselves, made of people, memories and emotions that gather around us throughout life." - Željka Mićanović Miljković
Željka Mićanović Miljković has lived in enough cities to know that belonging is not a question of address. Born in Tuzla, formed in Belgrade, educated in Macerata and Rome, shaped further by Istanbul and Ankara and now settled in Zurich where her studio bears the name of her youngest daughter, she has spent two decades turning displacement into a formal language rather than a biographical footnote. Her practice moves across painting, graphics, porcelain, jewelry and artist books with the ease of someone who has long stopped believing that a medium should stay in its lane, and her exhibition Svetli i strašni gradovi / Bright and Uncanny Cities, which recently closed in Belgrade, brought that language home to a city she describes as both bright and terrifying in equal measure. We sat down with her to talk about distance as a condition of seeing, the invisible threads that connect cities, materials and generations, and why the ideal city is probably something you carry inside yourself all along.
Irina Rusinovich: You were born in Tuzla, came of age in Belgrade, studied in Macerata and Rome, lived in Istanbul, Ankara and now Zurich. At what point does a city stop being a place you inhabit and become material you work with?
Željka Mićanović Miljković: When I moved from Belgrade to Macerata, I realized that I could observe a city much more clearly once I was no longer inside it. That is how the work about Belgrade was born, and later the homage to Macerata.
None of those works would have existed without displacement. Only once we leave a place do we begin to see it with the eyes of a traveler, with a certain nostalgia, but also with a new objectivity. We stop taking things for granted and finally understand their true value. Distance allows us to compare, to notice both beauty and flaws, and to truly see.
IR: Your doctoral research explored the ideal city as a space of desire, power and imagination. Did you ever find it or is the search itself the point?
ŽMM: For years I tried to find the ideal city, almost the way people search for Atlantis. But as time passes, I realize that the search itself may be the point. The ideal city is probably something we carry within ourselves, made of people, memories and emotions that gather around us throughout life.
IR: The exhibition is called Svetli i strašni gradovi / Bright and Uncanny CitiesCities. Which one is Belgrade for you right now, returning after all these years?
ŽMM: Both bright and terrifying. Belgrade is a city of paradoxes. It knows how to embrace you, but it also knows how to slap you in the face.
IR: Art historian Sara Kišević describes your work as layered like a contemporary city, fragments that interweave, separate, collide and then float independently in space. Is that layering a conscious formal decision or does it arrive on its own?
ŽMM: Just like in clothing, I love creating layers in my artistic process. I prefer revealing things slowly, layer by layer, instead of giving everything at once. We discover people gradually, and I believe artworks should function in the same way. That is why my works often contain hidden or half-hidden elements, so that each person can find the detail that feels personally important to them.
IR: Stitching and sewing appear in your technique, materials we associate with domesticity and care. What drew you to them as a way of talking about urban experience?
ŽMM: When I started working with artist books at the Academy, sewing came naturally as part of the process of binding and connecting pages together. My mother once told me I would never learn how to sew because I was too fast and impatient. At first I did it almost out of spite, but then I fell in love with it. My aunt used to sew beautifully, and after she passed away I inherited her threads, which I still use in my works today. For me, they became a connection between past and future, because everything is connected in some invisible way.
IR: Zurich and Belgrade are almost opposites as cities, one ordered and contained, the other unresolved and loud. How does that tension live in your current work?
ŽMM: I think they coexist surprisingly well. My work is expressive and airy, but at the same time calm and structured. Belgrade gives me inspiration, Zurich gives me structure.
IR: Your practice spans painting, graphics, porcelain, jewelry, artist books. Is there a hierarchy between these forms for you or do they all speak the same language?
ŽMM: In the end, they all speak the same language because one form constantly flows into another. They are connected through visible and invisible threads. Even when separated, each medium lives its own life while remaining part of the same whole. The central element for me is the artist book. I build it over many years, and from it paintings, objects and entire new worlds slowly emerge.
IR: You’ve been making work across multiple countries and languages for over two decades. Has the art market caught up with the nomadic artist or is it still an awkward category for the system?
ŽMM: I think the art world still prefers categories because categories are easier to present, archive and sell. A nomadic artist exists somewhere in between, between countries, languages and systems and that can make things more complicated. At the same time, I believe this kind of experience creates a richer and more layered artistic language. Today more and more artists belong to several places at once, so perhaps the system is slowly beginning to change as well.
IR: You named your Zurich studio Buba after your youngest daughter. How does motherhood sit inside a practice that is essentially about solitude, memory and displacement?
ŽMM: Motherhood gave me a dimension of life I did not even know existed before having children, a sense of fullness and security. At the same time, it made me value solitude even more. Because time becomes limited, I try to use moments of solitude with greater focus and intensity in my work. Being both a mother and an artist is deeply enriching for creativity, but in real life it is still a challenge. There is often an unspoken assumption that a woman artist cannot fully succeed if she also has a family. I would like to prove that this is not true.
IR: What does Belgrade give you as an artist that nowhere else can?
ŽMM: In Belgrade I do not need to explain too much. Even though many languages overlap there, Belgrade understands the invisible language I speak.
We are people who have moved, migrated and rebuilt ourselves throughout history, again and again. I think that leaves a certain emotional code inside us and Belgrade understands that code.