Bio : Born 1960 in Belgrade, Serbia, the former Yugoslavia. Lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia.
Description : As Yvonne Volkart states: “64 statements are proceeded in the following pattern: “I am Milica Tomic, I am Korean”, “I am Milica Tomi?, I am Norwegian”, and so forth. Initially, one can observe that every sentence contains a true and a false statement: yes, that is Milica Tomi?, but she is neither Korean nor Norwegian, nor Austrian for that matter. What is explored here is the very formation, the very making of an identity. To state, to pronounce one’s identity makes one’s identity. We acquire personal identity by acquiring the name, and it is significant that Milica Tomi? does not dispute that form of identity in all its arbitrariness. She problematizes the making of an ethnic or national identity, which she sees also as an arbitrary declaration. Also, this identity does not belong to any category of “feeling”, which is usually a way to transcend one’s original/inscribed ethnic identity by saying “I may be Korean if I feel as a Korean, even if I am originally Serbian”. On the contrary, she has rejected any ethnic feeling and explores the whole issue as a rhetorical formation. To paraphrase Laclau and Zac, every identification is constitutively incomplete and will have to be always re-created through new identification acts.”