MILENKA BERENGOLC

As a performance and multimedia artist, I have showcased original material via numerous venues and collaborations, such as the Brooklyn Museum, the State Museum of New York, Albany, and the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Staten Island and alternative staging sites (Hub17 on Wave Street: Day de Dada Art Collective, community and street performances). I perform live and on video in solo installations. My Masters is in Fine Arts from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

In my performance work, I use my psyche and body for multimedia explorations of public facades vs. private obsessions. I explore the interior landscape of the self, which can be at once personal and universal. I retrieve obscure and vital childhood memories as a wellspring for my practice.

In my installation/video performance “Of Mountains and Molehills”, I incorporate exaggeration and camouflage. My approach is, I believe, unflinchingly honest. Audiences experienced this piece as provocative, and sometimes discomfiting, as I utilized my internalized fixations to probe women’s societal role and image. Using assorted found objects, I question the way in which a woman’s self-image has been defined around her physical attributes. I target the objectification of the female breast and interrogate its status as a stereotypical emblem of womanhood.

In “Wall Piece”, a three-part performance video, I evoke the past and future of the artmaking process itself. The publication, Review, stated that I employed cunning simplicity and a reasonable avoidance of shallow posturing. In the piece, I also manipulate the convergence of diverse artmaking values, using references to classic modernism, Pop,and minimalist experiments, to frame a vision of modern loneliness and alienation. 

Videos - double click for full screen/Pictures - roll cursor over photos to see captions. 

PERFORMANCE & INSTALLATIONS
I’ve studied with Robert Morris, artist and professor (https//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert Morris); Maureen Connor, artist and professor (https//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen Connor) (Clearing the Vision); Diane Torr, performance artist  (https//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane Torr), (Milenka as Drag King); Peggy Ahwesh, filmmaker and professor (https//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy Ahwesh), (Notes to Myself, video); and Martha Wilson, founder of Franklin Furnace (https//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha Wilson), among others.

ALTERED PHOTOGRAPHS/PRINTS
My working paradigm has evolved, informed by performance artist Linda Montano (https//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda Montano), and author Suzi Gablick, (14 Years of Living Art; The Re-enchantment of Art). Seeking to merge the healing arts with performance, I am determined to create art explicitly as an act of compassion and an instrument of social change. Incorporating my experience as a Reiki master practitioner into performance, I view art as an exchange of energy, and the artist as medium (Wandering Healer). 

I have taken on different personae, whether as a comedic gesture (Milenka as Marie-Antoinette, Red Martini, SI , 2008) or (Milenka as Joan of Arc or on hearing voices) as I address my disabilities and the associated  social stigma. My most recent original characters include The Traveling Psychiatric Art Nurse with her Pop-Up Psychiatric Center (Day de Dada Ensemble, LUMEN Festival, SI, 2016-2017), and a spoofer of “sanity” as one of Two Loose Marbles (ETG Café, SI, 2016).

Varied theatre roles include Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals at Le Petit Versailles, New York City, 2019, and a hippie psychic in Lemon Drop by Lawrence (Schwabacher at HUB17 on Wave Street, SI. I also originated the role of the mentor/tormentor in Pendulum by Margaret Chase, produced at HUB17 On Wave Street and at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre.

Disability, too, informs my artistry, as I live with a bipolar condition and neurological disorder. JAZZ HANDS (click here to view) my 2021 video performance exploring trembling, I received a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs through Staten Island Arts. This is the third DCA grant I have been awarded. I have long worked in the disability community, including numerous initiatives with the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled.

)In 2017, I was selected to take part in the premiere Disability/Arts/NYC Task Force (DANT) boot camp, co-directed by Simi Linton, Author, Filmmaker and Arts Consultant, and Kevin Gotkin, Professor in the Department of Communications at NYU. DANT was at the time a collective of artists, activists and academics assembled to craft a meaningful disability/arts platform for NYC, and to strengthen the coalition of disabled artists and allies who reside and work here.

I am a current member of the Socially Distant Art Residency, a competitively selected cohort of nearly 50 artists who continue to explore the isolation and solitude that marked the pandemic and beyond. (https://sociallydistantart.com) (https://sociallydistantart.com/milenkaberengolc)

I have curated several major exhibitions. In 2018. I was the project originator and recipient of a SI DCA Fund Grant for the art project, Artists Undeterred, which showcased 75 disabled artists.  Co-curated with Margaret Chase, the sprawling initiative included two exhibitions at the Pride Center of SI, and RE/Configurations: art, disability, identity, art, at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor, Staten Island. At the Newhouse, I moderated a panel discussion, Widening the Lens on Disability, and interviewed Dr. Carrie Sandahl, Associate professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  https://ahs.uic.edu/disability-human-development/directory/sandahl-carrie/

I was previously awarded a SI Arts DCA Fund Grant for the exhibition Life as Art, Vlepo Gallery, 2004, Staten Island, which included works by Hannah Wilke, Allan Kaprow, Linda Montano, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles.

In Healing/Transforming, 2002, Snug Harbor Studios, SI, local artists were showcased alongside works by Linda Montano, Mary Beth Edelson, and Beth Ames Schwartz.

My childhood left its marks. I was brought from France at the age of nine to live in New York City, with no knowledge of English. As a witness and a loner, I sought to make sense of the world around me through keen sensitivity to body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. These fundamental skills continue to inform my worldview and my work. Especially amid the pandemic, the here and now, the connectedness of living in the moment, is all that we have and all that matters.