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At Artphilein La Piscina, the exhibition Distances We Carry by Vladimir Miljević is presented in collaboration with Daniele Agostini. The project stems from a work in the Artphilein Collection — a recycled brick bearing the word “MIR” (peace) — which acts as a catalyst for broader reflections on historical memory, collective identity, and the cultural construction of language.
Miljević, a Swiss artist of Serbian-Bosnian descent, explores themes of migration, political tran- sformation, cultural belonging, and intergenerational dialogue. His artistic practice is rooted in installation, sculpture, and performance, often drawing from his own personal and family history as a lens through which to examine wider geopolitical dynamics and linguistic shifts.
Specifically conceived for the unique architecture of La Piscina, the exhibition includes recent and previously unseen works, arranged in a site-responsive installation. Upon entering the space, Milje- vić establishes a significant visual dialogue between pieces from his Demoralised Tensions (2023) series and The Lacemaker’s Notebook (2012) by queer South African artist Pierre Fouché, part of the Artphilein Foundation collection. Vintage lace sourced by Miljević from second-hand shops is intertwined with Fouché’s lacework and pinned onto wax-covered bricks — creating a poetic sur- face that speaks to fragility, labor, and cultural layering.
The brick, a recurring symbol of construction and memory, reappears in the series Carbon Copy (2023), where multilingual phrases collected during Miljević’s travels are imprinted onto the surface, transforming the brick into a vessel for transmission, translation, and fragmentation of meaning.
Language plays a central role in Miljević’s practice, as seen in the recent series Imagined Tongues (2025), where the words “peace,” “love,” and “hope” are repeated three times each in Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian. These terms are dyed onto cotton military sheets produced by a historic Swiss manufacturer, subtly referencing post-conflict memory, cohabitation, and linguistic nuances in the Balkan region.
At the center of the space, suspended above the former pool basin, hangs Transboundary Waters (2024): three buoys, each sourced from a different Swiss river (Limmat, Aare, and Rhine), dangle from the ceiling and are chained to the tiled perimeter of the pool. This powerful installation evokes natural continuity and fluid identity, symbolizing the inevitable interconnectedness of territories and cultures, as one river flows into the next.