Mila Panić

Visual description: A field with high weeds sets the stage for this durational video work. Flames creep into the frame and the fire continues to spread across the field. The sky fills with beige-gray smoke. The viewer is invited to follow the progression of the fire, from yellow, red, and orange flames to orange embers lighting the last of the weeds on the burnt-out black ground.   

Wall Text: Burning Field depicts the seasonal burning of a field that has been promised to the artist, as an inheritance. In the Balkan region, where she is from, burning crops and weeds on the fields after the autumn harvest is an annual process to clear and fertilize the land for the next year. The artist explains, “With this work, I am asking what my responsibility is towards my heritage and inheritance in displacement. Our relationship to the landscape often speaks of a longing for the land we are familiar with, which was or is ours, and has defined our sense of self.” Many of Panic's works investigate her Bosnian roots and living as an immigrant in Germany.

About

Mila Panić is a Bosnian-born artist and stand-up comedian, based in Berlin. Her practice ranges from personalized documentation to highly poetic visual and discursive elements, from drawings to family videos, found footage, food and photographs, creating a cycle that interprets the various inheritances of migration by providing the glimpses into the consequences of the process itself revealing what is not documented, shaping the whole picture, de-masks the different cultural narratives existing subtly in the very idea of migration. She is the host of the Broken English podcast, which explores the politics of language and the question of how is to live between two or more languages. She is the co-founder of the collective and association Fully Funded Residencies.eV, that provides an overview of paid opportunities for all cultural workers, as well as for the exchange of experiences and critical reflection on AIR programs. Mila Panić is the winner of ZVONO Young Visual Artist Award of Bosnia and Herzegovina for 2020, and recipient of number of scholarships such as Stiftung Kunstfond Bonn grant for 2023 (Germany), Braunschweig Projects artist grant 2022/23 from Braunschweig University (Germany), Koganecho Baazar A-i-R Manager Internship in Residence (Japan), Künstlerhaus Lukas, Ahrenshoop (Germany), Residency Unlimited, New York (US), Research Grant for Visual Arts 2021 from Senate Department for Culture and Europe, etc.