Zoe Miloš interview

20 / 09 / 2024 / Interview

Inter­view by: Marko Zubak

Can you tell us some­thing about your­self and your jour­ney into the world of art from the world of skate­board­ing? Was there ever a point where skate­board­ing became jeal­ous of art?

I’d say the inter­sec­tion happened primar­ily through pho­to­graphy, which is not only an integ­ral part of skate cul­ture but also the most access­ible medi­um. Pho­to­graphy became the first way I star­ted cap­tur­ing what seemed inter­est­ing to me about skate­board­ing. Later, it became the “gate­way” to expand­ing my interest in oth­er media I use today. I think after 15 years or more of intense involve­ment, skate­board­ing would under­stand the tend­en­cies it has caused more than it would be jeal­ous, espe­cially of cre­ation, which is some­thing it also embod­ies in a way.

Do you ever exper­i­ence moments in your artist­ic pro­cess sim­il­ar to skate­board­ing, where you’re try­ing to land a trick and it takes a while before you suc­ceed? Can such a com­par­is­on even be made, or are these two com­pletely dif­fer­ent kinds of creativity?

Def­in­itely. I think that’s one of the reas­ons why we con­tin­ue doing some­thing for many years. The con­tinu­ous failed attempts and moment when you finally cross the line between suc­cess and fail­ure are some of the rewards you begin to appre­ci­ate in skate­board­ing. It’s a prin­ciple that can guide you in any pur­suit because it makes everything more inter­est­ing, and mis­takes become jus­ti­fied. So, yes, I would com­pare all express­ive meth­ods to some extent because (I assume) we are return­ing to the feel­ing that the medi­um provides us with, more than the medi­um itself.

What tools do you use for your cre­at­ive work? Can you explain why you chose these par­tic­u­lar tools?

For smal­ler-format works on paper, I mainly use tra­di­tion­al tools in com­bin­a­tion with graph­ic tech­niques like xer­o­graphy. When paint­ing lar­ger formats, I use whatever suits the situ­ation and pro­cess: spray paint, oil, acryl­ic, enamel, con­crete paint… I tend to believe that I’m not a good drafts­man and that without col­or, I can’t achieve much. By com­bin­ing everything I men­tioned, I cre­ate rela­tion­ships not only between the col­ors but also between their tex­tures, the tools used to apply them, and the space in front of and behind them. This allows for unex­pec­ted res­ults dur­ing exper­i­ment­a­tion, mak­ing the fin­ished work more com­pre­hens­ive and (hope­fully) more concrete.

The tex­ture and mater­i­al­ity of your lar­ger-format paint­ings are strik­ing. How import­ant is phys­ic­al inter­ac­tion with your works in con­vey­ing the over­all nar­rat­ive? Do you envi­sion your audi­ence enga­ging with your art bey­ond just visu­al perception?

Most of these paint­ings devel­op over months, with lay­ers of paint being accu­mu­lated almost ran­domly, scraped, glued, torn… You could say I ven­ture into sculp­ture (which I stud­ied), and through this pro­cess, I arrive at tex­tures that con­trib­ute to the final appear­ance and later recep­tion of the work. Des­pite being in a clas­sic­al form of cre­ation that is primar­ily visu­ally per­ceived, I hope that, like me, view­ers exper­i­ence asso­ci­ations that turn the paint­ings into sym­bols of some­thing bey­ond mere aesthetics.

You work at a time when many see tra­di­tion­al art as a pre­ser­va­tion of the past. How do you recon­cile the nos­tal­gic aspect of your prac­tice with the for­ward-look­ing per­spect­ive often found in con­tem­por­ary art?

Since what I do is primar­ily inten­ded for myself, the assump­tion is that I have chosen it regard­less of trends or the state of the art at any giv­en time. This means that the con­scious use of some­thing archa­ic might even be a state­ment against recent tend­en­cies around us, although that’s not neces­sar­ily the case for me. Today, eclecticism is an insep­ar­able part of exist­ence, so I don’t think it’s neces­sary to ask what medi­um someone works with, but rather why and to what end they engage with it on a spir­itu­al level.

I par­tic­u­larly love your works where you com­bine tra­di­tion­al media with more con­tem­por­ary tech­niques like pho­to­copy­ing. How do you see the rela­tion­ship between tech­no­logy and tra­di­tion­al art evolving in your work? Do you set any bound­ar­ies for your­self, and what does it take to cross them?

I acci­dent­ally stumbled upon this pro­cess at Oleg’s Print Zine work­shop (and I still don’t know how), where I prin­ted over an already fin­ished work and dis­covered that the xer­o­graph­ic machine would become cent­ral to my work on paper ever since. So, an exper­i­ment I didn’t con­trol res­ul­ted in a feel­ing we’d already dis­cussed, dir­ect­ing an entire way of cre­at­ing that I hadn’t even con­sidered. Every break­ing of bound­ar­ies brings new ones, and every new rela­tion­ship (between tra­di­tion and tech­no­logy) comes with its lim­it­a­tions or advant­ages, which may be motiv­a­tions but not the goal.

In an era when digit­al art is becom­ing increas­ingly prom­in­ent, what drives you to stay loy­al to tra­di­tion­al media? Do you think the phys­ic­al­ity and tactil­ity in art offer some­thing irre­place­able for the viewer’s experience?

Ulti­mately, it comes down to taste. For some­thing to remain rel­ev­ant, it has to change over time accord­ing to spir­it, demand, and fash­ion… Today’s factors dif­fer from those of yes­ter­day, and the same will be true tomor­row. The same applies to skate­board­ing, which sur­vives by chan­ging. Some­times we like it, some­times less so, but its sur­viv­al sug­gests that there is prob­ably some­thing of qual­ity and interest, per­haps even spir­itu­al, in it. What I’m cur­rently work­ing on requires a cer­tain tactil­ity and hand­writ­ing, even though it’s on a two-dimen­sion­al sur­face — some­thing that dis­tances it from the digit­al realm. How­ever, as men­tioned earli­er, everything could sig­ni­fic­antly change tomor­row. All new pos­sib­il­it­ies are cer­tainly usable and more suit­able if there is a reas­on. I don’t think it’s about loy­alty to tra­di­tion, but more about affin­ity and one’s pos­i­tion with­in time, at least in my case.

How do you see the future of cre­ativ­ity now that gen­er­at­ive arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is evolving rap­idly, open­ing new paths for artists and cre­at­ives? Do you see any­thing excit­ing in this new tech­no­logy? Some claim that AI could poten­tially replace human cre­ativ­ity, while col­lab­or­a­tion between AI and humans is increas­ing. What do you think? Do you see AI as a col­lab­or­at­or or a com­pet­it­or to human artists?

AI is pro­gress, and we can’t deny that, assum­ing it can gen­er­ally add more than it takes away. More pre­cisely, it can add to art, while it can speed up or skip pro­cesses for the indi­vidu­al cre­at­or. The use of AI has become attract­ive and a “thing of the day,” a trend that can be both good and bad. I don’t think AI will dimin­ish cre­ativ­ity, but it could dir­ect it in anoth­er dir­ec­tion that changes the paradigm of the medi­um. Still, I believe cre­ativ­ity is one of the fun­da­ment­al val­ues that stands above most mater­i­al­iz­a­tions, includ­ing AI, no mat­ter how wide­spread or trendy it becomes.

With more ser­i­ous work come exhib­i­tions, and that’s noth­ing new to you. In what way do you man­age to exist as an artist with­in your com­munity? Do you see exhib­i­tions as enjoy­ment and motiv­a­tion for work or some­thing inev­it­able that you need to get used to in the art world?

Giv­en the num­ber of oppor­tun­it­ies I haven’t applied for, I wouldn’t say I’m ser­i­ous enough about this integ­ral but sec­ond­ary aspect of cre­ation: exhib­it­ing. While I’m aware of the pos­sib­il­it­ies exhib­i­tions offer, I think there’s a norm to con­stantly exhib­it, which (at least for now) seems like one of the steps I will mature into once my cre­ation reaches the level I aspire to. I believe that exhib­it­ing is one of the more import­ant pro­cesses of cre­ation because it allows what you’ve made or con­ceived to be viewed as object­ively as pos­sible when it’s isol­ated and placed in a nat­ur­al hab­it­at. This way, you notice mis­takes, strengths, or weak­nesses, and it opens space for dis­cus­sion and cri­tique, which is just as import­ant, if not the most import­ant aspect of grow­ing into a con­crete artist.

Here’s Jabe, he has a ques­tion for you: What defined, taught, or shaped you the most for soci­ety and life dur­ing your skate­board­ing years? What’s your skate­board­ing highlight?

The first thing that comes to mind is per­sever­ance. That drive to mas­ter some­thing regard­less of how long it takes is one of the most valu­able les­sons that has shaped my future endeavors — or maybe I’m just glor­i­fy­ing skate­board­ing, which is also pos­sible. The biggest achieve­ment in skate­board­ing was find­ing like-minded people. We became friends, made a video, and con­tin­ued hanging out and col­lab­or­at­ing to this day. That’s undoubtedly the biggest achieve­ment, without a doubt.

Finally, what’s next for you and your work? Do you have any excit­ing pro­jects or col­lab­or­a­tions com­ing up?

After Vladi­mir, I’m going to a res­id­ency, and that’s all I know regard­ing work until the end of the year. Bey­ond that, I tend to gradu­ally increase the size of my paint­ings, to try screen print­ing again, and even to com­bine screen print­ing with paint­ing… I’m afraid not much is set in stone, but at the same time, that excites me due to the many open possibilities.