Multimedia installation “Decoding Silence” (Mileva: Decoding)
Multimedia installation “Decoding Silence” is part of the multimedia event “Mileva: Decoding”, which will take place at Čeličana, in Distrikt, and in this way commemorate 150 years since the birth of Mileva Marić Einstein. “Mileva: Decoding” will ceremonially open Čeličana as a new, renovated space in Distrikt, and its multimedia character will once again confirm the UNESCO title that Novi Sad received in 2023 as a city of media arts.
Thanks to this installation by Tijana Jevrić, visitors will have the opportunity, upon their first visit to the renovated Čeličana, to experience an idea of its purpose as a centre for media arts.
Entry is free, and the installation can be viewed on December 20 from 7:30 PM and on December 21 from 9 PM.
Words from the author:
The multimedia installation “Mileva: Decoding Silence” explores the inner world of Mileva Marić through a visual and sound landscape unfolding in multiple dramaturgical segments. Rather than a biographical or documentary reading, the work focuses on processes of thought, on cracks and gaps in history, and on questions of female autonomy within the space of knowledge.
The concept of the work emerged from the need to consider silence as a space of density, complexity, and unresolved meanings. By researching Mileva Marić’s personality, I realised that she cannot be approached through linear logic. She is a figure that exists in the in-between: between the visible and the hidden, between the preserved, the exact, and the interpreted between the lines. In this in-between space, the question arises for me as an artist – how to represent someone who is, above all, present in silence?
In its form, the work follows the structure of the heroine’s journey, but not through linear storytelling, rather through atmosphere and physical transformations of space. The visitor enters an environment functioning as an inner mechanism, a laboratory of the mind where phases of curiosity, creation, loss, and transformation alternate. Walls become membranes that react to sound: mathematical formulas pulse like living matter, doors open and close like internal and external life boundaries, and Mileva’s silhouette expresses her presence without imitating or reconstructing her identity.
At one moment, the space fractures into darkness, filled with fragments of manuscripts and whispers, showing what has remained invisible in the historical narrative. Silence, in this context, becomes a place of resistance and a space where Mileva’s thought continues to exist despite erasure and suppression. From it arises the final segment of the work, in which light and shadow become a metaphor for the return to oneself. She is presented as a thinking subject, a woman who created, doubted, fought, questioned herself, and, despite everything, remained faithful to her inner world. In the final segment, when shadows break into tiny, almost imperceptible particles of light, the impression emerges that Mileva does not return through representation, but through the way the viewer begins to see the surrounding space differently. Within this shift in perception lies her emancipation: not as a biographical fact, but as a philosophical truth.
The process of creating this work became a dialogue with her thoughts, which I never heard but whose rhythm I feel. I did not want to speak for her; I wanted to construct conditions in which her presence could be felt, where her intellectual energy, ethical horizon, and inner rhythm could be perceived as subtle, yet persistent resonance.
Ultimately, “Decoding Silence” is a visual story about intelligence, vulnerability, and resistance, about a female identity that history tried to marginalize but could not erase. It is a space in which Mileva belongs only to herself and where she finally becomes visible.
About the author:
Tijana Jevrić graduated in New Media Arts at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. She is a multimedia artist whose interests include spatial, site-specific, and audiovisual installations, as well as holographic projections. Her work is based on exploring the growing influence of media culture as a producer of social reality and self-awareness. She examines the movement of the individual within virtual space. At the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, she was awarded a scholarship and prize for the best artistic work in the discipline of New Media (2020). She has realised numerous projects, publications, solo and group exhibitions in Serbia and abroad, including at the Cultural Centre of Serbia in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina in Novi Sad, and Ars Electronica in Linz. She has presented her work at multiple significant group exhibitions, events, and festivals and has participated in several workshops both nationally and internationally. She has received multiple awards. Since 2017, she has collaborated with BelArt Gallery in Novi Sad as a multimedia designer. She lives and works in Novi Sad.
Sound Designer: Miloš Martinov – Lag
Lighting Designer: Anđelko Popić
Video Projections and Animations: Dejan Stojkov
Mapping: Đorđe Popović
The event is supported through the international project Mosaic.