Marica Radojčić: naučnica i umetnica
Marica Radojčić: Scientist and Artist

Author(s): Sanja Kojić Mladenov
Subject(s): History, Gender history
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: Professor Marica Radojčić (1943–2018); science; art; mathematics; digital art; interdisciplinarity; women
Summary/Abstract: Throughout her academic and artistic career, mathematician and multimedia visual artist Professor Marica Radojčić (Novi Karlovci, 1943 – Belgrade, 2018) actively linked art and science through an interdisciplinary approach, striving to demonstrate the inseparability of the creative process in each of these two fields. From the late 1960s she was employed by the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Belgrade, where she had graduated and completed her postgraduate and doctoral studies. She studied in Germany and in the USA as a Fulbright scholar. She was a visiting professor and researcher at many international universities (Bonn, Hamburg, Moscow, Berkeley, Stanford, New York, …). She started a seminar on applied mathematics and mathematical linguistics, and established a Mathematical Art Workshop at the Faculty of Mathematics. In her artistic experiments, she simultaneously applied knowledge in the field of natural sciences, especially mathematical linguistics, logic and algebra, fostering philosophical and metaphysical discourse. Her specific interdisciplinary-experimental artistic approach began in the early 80s, when her alternative method was misunderstood in the artistic intellectual environment of Serbia, and she achieved success by exhibiting on the foreign art scene, primarily in America and then in Europe. She developed a specific multimedia artistic practice, based on experiments in painting, media installations, spatial environments and digital animations. She participated in the founding of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of the Arts in Belgrade, the Digital Arts Group – the first digital art programme in our country – on which she also taught. Disappointed by the inefficiency of the academic and institutional systems, she founded the independent Arts and Sciences Association (UMNA), continuing her own innovative activity at home and abroad. After a large solo exhibition at the Matica Srpska Gallery in Novi Sad, she left a signifcant part of her artistic oeuvre to this institution, which was to become the basis for her legacy. The aim of this paper is, by using the example of Marica Radojčić’s profession “between” science and art, to draw attention to the importance of the permeation of science and art as inseparable parts in a unique process of creativity, where both are necessary and essential. In doing so, I point to the contribution she made in these fi - elds, intertwining their mutual knowledge, methods and approaches, analysing the (non-)acceptance and (in)visibility of her work by the expert audience.

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