The residency will run from November 30, 2024, to January 25, 2025. During this period, smaller public events will be organized and announced in advance.
nominis is launching her research project drangulije during a residency at GMK. By embodying her drag alter ego, she explores identity, gender, and queer theories, using drag performance as a medium to challenge and reconstruct social norms.
The project focuses on creating a drag persona that serves as a platform for generating new ideas and practices in an artistic context. The research began with a trip to Brussels in collaboration with the artist Marko Gutić Mižimakov, who is also the mentor for the project.
As part of the residency, a presentation of the work with drag collaborators will be held for the public on January 11th 2025 at 7 PM. More details will be announced later.
Words from curator Antonela Solenički:
Nominis comes to the GMK residency to create a world where bodies and identities are transformed through new layers of material—she tailors her own reality by gathering trinkets.
These seemingly insignificant trinkets—scraps of material, glamorous second-hand dresses, fake nails, and tousled wigs—are then transformed into costumes, outfits, gloves, and head coverings—layers of a new skin.
In addition to collecting trinkets—both physical and emotional fragments—Nominis brings people together, friends and collaborators, to collectively explore mistakes and attempts as tools for resisting normative constructions of gender and identity. Through these crafted moments of sharing, collaboration becomes the core dynamic of this artistic residency, built on intense dialogue and the exchange of experiences. From the initial phase of working with a mentor, who provides support and a critical framework for artistic exploration, to inviting others to participate in play and creation, drangulije becomes a space for collective practice.
The skin that perhaps envelops and protects us is elastic and permeable, paradoxically both occupying and disabling us, thus setting the first boundary between us and the world. However, the materials that Nominis transforms into her new skin offer her new possibilities—they change with movement, absorbing and refracting light that here becomes a tool for revealing the hidden and concealing the obvious. As the materials shimmer, changing colors and textures from different angles, the moving body becomes a site of continuous transformation.
At the heart of this process lies the concept of mistakes—unforeseen errors in the creative process that become the foundation for further work. Mistakes are not discarded but transformed into opportunities; they create space for the unexpected. This approach recognizes the value of imperfection and failure, allowing for a deeper understanding of the exploration of gender and sexuality as socio-technological constructs. It draws on the theory of glitch feminism by Legacy Russell, where glitches are embraced and used as tools of action, signs of resistance, opposing a society that perpetually enacts violence on our bodies. These “correct mistakes” reveal the necessity of such disruptions in challenging the norm.
An essential aspect of this residency is the process-oriented nature of the work, where ideas are layered and developed through collective exploration and exchange. Each step—from experimenting with materials and light to collaboratively designing costumes and stage elements—leads to the drag performance that will be presented as the culmination of the residency. This performance embodies a spirit of collaboration and an investigative approach, blending elements of improvisation, movement, and transformation. drangulije is a space where bodies and identities are in constant flux, a meeting point for collective sharing and a celebration of the discarded, the imperfect, and everything that doesn’t fit yet radiates its own brilliance.
drangulija – a regional term for a small item of little value, often used for decoration, such as costume jewelry, figurines, and similar objects. https://hjp.znanje.hr/index.php?show=search_by_id&id=fF9iWRQ%3D&keyword=drangulija
nominis (Josip Knežević) finished a master’s degree in New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. This year, she is participating in the WHW Academy program. Her work spans 3D animation, new media, visual art, text, and performance. Through her practice, she creates and materializes her drag alter ego, “Nominis,” in objects and digital spaces through video, performance, installations, and drag. Solo exhibitions include the performance “Nominis: THIS IS (W)HERE I POST FROM” at Kamba Gallery in Zagreb, Nominis 0.00# at VN Gallery, and Nominis 0.123# at Klub Kocka Gallery in Split. She has also exhibited in numerous group shows in Croatia and abroad, including “An Archive, a Body, an Album, and a Story” at Exhibit Eschenbachgasse Gallery in Vienna, “Koštac/Grappling” at the Improspections festival at MSU Zagreb, and “7 Faces of the City” at Kortil Gallery in Rijeka.
Marko Gutić Mižimakov (b. 1992) works with performance, animation, and text, exploring ways to shape sensory materials through intimate, collaborative, and social processes. Drawing inspiration from queer science fiction, his work choreographs bodies, as well as digital and tangible objects, into structures of non-orientable forms of presentation. He views his performances as speculative technologies for mutual transformation. From May 2022 to September 2023, he was part of the artistic research center a.pass (Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies) in Brussels. Currently, he serves as an external associate in transmedia arts at the Paris College of Art.
Artist: nominis
Residency Title: drangulije
Curators: Antonela Solenički, Petar Vranjković
Residency Mentor: Marko Gutić Mižimakov
Producer: Tea Matanović
GMK Manager: Maja Pavlinić
Visual Designer: Sara Pavleković Preis
Production: Generator of Multidisciplinary Co-Productions (GMK)
Project Supported by: The Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb
GMK Supported by: Kultura Nova Foundation, INA d.d.
