Nela Milic
The project presents brides passionately attached to the objects of their marriage. That is evident from the photos - women in wedding dresses have a physical connection with their rooted fellow. Wedding dresses are surrounded by other wedding iconography, but the image is not a joke – it is a serious matter - an event of desperation and illusion shot as on a true wedding ceremony.
Nela, from ‘Wedding Bellas’, 2011
Jobeda, from ‘Wedding Bellas’, 2011
The photographs are stories of twelve women who all found themselves at different points in their lives at the time when they refused to leave. Many have been rejected by their partners, by their landlords, by their employers, but majority have been refused to stay in the country by the state. The women showed an extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness in the face of sometimes all of these rejections happening at once and the burden of so many problems caused them to escape into fantasy by opting for equally stable, rooted and good looking ‘Queen’s subjects’ – a lamp post, a tree, a traffic sign – London landmarks... With the mix of the text and image we trouble the perception of migrants and refugees in the UK today. The project is funded by European Cultural Foundation with women from Migrants Resource Centre and females who wanted to join them.
Margaret, from ‘Wedding Bellas’, 2011
I am an artist and an academic working in media and arts. I merge text and image, creating installations, maps and publications. I delivered projects for John Lewis, Oxford House, Campbell Works, Oxo Tower, Light Gallery and independent productions... I am interested in the intersection of time and space, which brought me to many multi-media and arts projects where I dealt with narrative, digital archives, city and participation. I coordinate Contextual and Theoretical Studies at University of the Arts, London.
Homepage︎︎︎