Zorica Čolić (she/her)
b. Sabac, Serbia
Zorica Čolić is a visual artist born in Serbia and currently based in New York. Her background in art and theory led to a research-based multidisciplinary practice that deals with issues around the human body as a political and cultural symptom. Using a wide range of media, such as video, sound, found materials and text, she explores how health and well-being intersect with sexuality, gender, class, and economy. She combines research, critical theory, facts and humor to expose the excesses and distortions of contemporary life, while exploring alternative ways to overcome the governability of our bodies.
Zorica Čolić holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University, NY, and a BFA in Painting from Academy of Arts, Novi Sad, Serbia. She was a resident artist at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, Institute for Electronic Arts (Alfred, NY), International Summer Academy (Salzburg, Austria), etc. Selected solo and group exhibitions include: Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space, New York; The Energy Museum of Santralistanbul, Istanbul, Turkey; Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade, Serbia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany.
Instagram: @zoricaxcolic
Email: colic.zorica@gmail.com
Website: http://zoricacolic.com/
I Feel . . . Happy . . . Euphoria . . . Hypnotic Poison, 2021, Mixed media - glass perfume bottles, pills (Xanax, Viagra, OxyContin) in ethanol, acrylic frame, text. Dimensions: frame 8 x 10”, each bottle 1.5” x 3” x 0.75” Image Credit: Zorica Čolić
Artist Statement
As an ongoing project, I extract the fragrance of controversial, widely prescribed, and at the same time popular drugs, often abused for recreational use. Shown here are perfumes made of Xanax (tranquilizer, treats anxiety), Viagra (treats erectile dysfunction) and OxyContin (pain killer, opioid). The names “Happy”, “Allure” and “Wicked” are taken from the popular commercial perfumes and relate to the medication’s properties. Typically, perfume names and the marketing around them refer to seduction, power and lust. Not much differently, pharmaceutical companies often made questionable claims in the marketing of pills, promoting the benefits that are not always scientifically proven, while obscuring their side effects. The project comments on how under capitalism today, everything, even something as intangible as feelings and diseases gets co-opted and commodified, and values are blurred to the point that there is no distinction between the authentic or the fake, beneficial or detrimental.