Narrative Biography
Mladen Bundalo (born in 1986, Prijedor) is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and author of Bosnian origin, who live and work in Brussels (BE). His projects are psycho-geographical travelogues and auto-etnographical objects that explore themes of belonging, migration, diaspora, uncertainty and value.
His works have been screened and presented in over 50 international film and videoart festivals, such as IDFA (Amsterdam), Ji.hlava IDFF (Jihlava), Go Short (Nijmegen), Vidéographies (Liège), Sarajevo Film Festival, and Punto de Vista IDFF (Pamplona).
He has showcased his work in more than 70 exhibitions and residencies, including venues like Künstlerhaus (Vienna), MoCA RS (Banja Luka), National Gallery of Montenegro (Cetinje), Summerhall (Edinburgh), Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti (Verona), and iMAL (Brussels).
He is the author of several artist books, such as “There and here, here and there” published by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Banja Luka, or “Hectolitre”, published by Hectolitre art space in Brussels.
Mladen is a member of La FAP (Federation of Plastic Arts), ARRF (Association of Francophone Directors), BARN (Brussels Artists-Run Network), and the Hectolitre art space in Belgium, Tač.ka art group in Bosnia, and very much involved in artists self-organisation and empoverment.
Artist statement
As someone who grew up in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, I had no choice but to witness what it means to live through social disaster and economic breakdown. This experience of a feral, never-ending transition and cultural disappearance became a part of my intrinsic spacetime, a mechanism constantly ticking out critical reflections. On the other side, as an artist-migrant who has lived in five European countries over the last 15 years, I am trying to understand how my homeland memories define the way I walk and act in my new living spaces and interact with the diverse offsets of European bureaucracy and adhocracy.
What is homemaking about? How does one learn to deal with the sharp edges of administration and ever-evolving social crises? How can one create a sense of belonging in a space and time where belonging is not supposed to happen? How can one cope with the uncertain and chaotic nature of value systems? How can one overcome economic precarity while preserving artistic integrity?
Addressing these questions means much more to me than just an occasion to make “art” - it brings me the happiness of exploring and understanding the geometry of our inner universes and their fragility to cultural patterns, technological flows, and social frictions. Therefore, one can say that my work focuses on exploring the phenomenology of cultural experience from an auto-ethnographic position.
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