Brigita Antoni

— born in 1987 in Bar, Montenegro. As a visual artist informed by the knowledge she acquired during her studies in graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cetinje, she began showcasing her work through digital media such as GIFs, digital prints, and video. Over time, she allowed her works to take on more organic forms, reinterpreting them as acrylic paintings, sand/concrete sculptures, found objects from nature, and drawings. Currently, her artistic practice revolves around installation forms that bridge the digital and the organic. Thematically, she explores the relationship between science and global ecological transformations driven by scientific discoveries, particularly in astronomy and optics. Over time, she has also embraced the idea of incorporating nature not just as a thematic element, but as an actual exhibition space for her works.

I was born in a small town in the south of Montenegro. My home was near a sandy beach, a place where, alongside the fascinating and wild nature, the sea and the river meet. My earliest memories were shaped by these landscapes, which can easily be recognized in my work. The vastness of long sandy beaches, the moonlight over the sea—these are some of the visuals I have depicted in my works. These representations are accompanied by themes of observing the environment (nature) and the inner feelings it evokes in us during moments of interaction with it. Within this theme, I have often used the moon as a key detail and symbol for human states or emotions. On this occasion, I will take as an example my project titled The Moon is Wet and Wild,12
which I had the opportunity to exhibit in 2019 at the Archaeological Museum in my hometown. In these works, I present the moon as a “mysterious light” or a black stain that I “cast” onto the viewers. This black stain, in fact, reflects their state of inertia, passivity, stagnation, and immobility, or that state of consciousness that keeps the masses in a silent, universally accepted, yet false and distorted sense of security. This black stain, which opens the possibility for a minimal yet necessary correction of the viewer’s perspective on the world, arises from personal perception of nature and the society around me. As a synthesis of intellectual, emotional, and cosmic energy from which this series emerges, it takes shape as a poetic manifestation of public protest speech, a discreet gesture of dissonance with the given, static state of things.

Growing up in a strictly patriarchal environment, I witnessed the suppression and obstruction this society imposes on any individual who does not conform to its prescribed system of behavior and thought, especially women. This voicelessness manifested as an inability to express oneself, something I often encountered personally and found deeply frustrating. Yet, it also became a crucial turning point that led me to focus on visual art and writing as my profession. While creating art helped me feel less like a victim of circumstances, over time it also created additional frustration with existing in this state and the difficulty of identifying with the nation. I often asked myself what home meant to me and how to position myself about the political reality surrounding me. If, as human beings, we strive for security, both physical and psychological, and the concept of homeland is a distorted reality, then connection with nature remains one of the few possibilities for identification. In this case, I do not emphasize nature as a romantic idea of homeland or an escape to safety, but rather as a necessity inherent to our human nature in the face of the globalized artificiality in which we exist. While working on the project Matter Dolorosa3, which I began in the spring of 2021 during the second COVID-19 lockdown, I touched on this theme through an installation in a private pool where I placed sealed trash bags filled with plastic. During two months of recreational walks dedicated to collecting plastic waste in nature, I encountered an interesting contrast. It lay in the tension between the quality of time spent in nature, which brought me peace and often led me to meditative states, and the presence of things like scattered waste, foul smells, and dead animals, sometimes intertwined, which I often found visually disturbing. In this contrast, I realized, above all, that any project dealing with the theme of nature is not necessarily defined by ecological activism but rather by the formal and conceptual characteristics of the artistic work. I believe that through a universal and global artistic language, free of political propaganda, my message may have more lasting effects because it invites reflection and individual presence to global events. It primarily calls for presence in the space of nature through meditation and acceptance of the world as it is, even though there is a need to hide or camouflage something “unpleasant.” Another thing I have come to believe is that human identity is prone to transformation and that a sense of security can also be found in experiencing nature as part of us, in accepting our being as simultaneously fragile and powerful.

Beyond my individual experience, the uncertainty of the planet Earth further motivates me to engage with these themes. In the post-capitalist system, we witness a need for control that is losing its meaning, and the illusion that technological advancement and optical possibilities can prevent or predict some destruction that might disrupt our life on Earth is becoming increasingly transparent. I consider the instability and rapid pace of climate change to be a crucial issue for human life. That is why the theme of natural disasters remains important to me, as it helps me visually depict a contrasting reflection of the subject as their natural reaction to the place or situation they find themselves in. In this way, I have the possibility to examine differently perceived realities, which is key to my exploration of the image and the visual world as a whole.

1Image: Brigita Antoni, The Moon Is Wet and Wild, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 2x100x70cm. Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Local History, Ulcinj.

2Image: Brigita Antoni, The Moon Is Wet and Wild, 2019, rapidograph on paper, 10x15cm. Courtesy of the artist The Museum of Local History, Ulcinj.

3Image: Brigita Antoni, Matter Dolorosa, 2021, waste bags, plastic materials. Courtesy of the artist.

4Image: Brigita Antoni, Dead End, 2019, digital print, 230x50cm, tablet. Courtesy of the artist.

5Image: Brigita Antoni, Dead End (detail), 2019, digital print, 230x50cm, tablet. Courtesy of the artist.

6Image: Brigita Antoni, Kulshedra, 2024, Ada Bojana, Ulcinj, Montenegro. Courtesy of the artist.

7Image: Brigita Antoni, Burning Bush, 2015, digital print, 100x70cm. Courtesy of the artist.

8Image: Brigita Antoni, Mala The Little One, 2021, digital print, soil, 100x60cm. Courtesy of the artist and NMCG, Cetinje.

9Image: Brigita Antoni, Roads, 2017, digital prints, rock, 200x130cm, 30x40cm, Milcik Award Finalists Exhibition, Montenegrin Art Gallery Miodrag Dado Duric. Courtesy of the artist and the Milčik Award.

10Image: Brigita Antoni, Softness of Being, 2017, digital prints, LED panel lights, 60x60cm. Courtesy of the artist

11Image: Brigita Antoni, Female, 2015, digital print, 100x70cm. Courtesy of the artist