VAA – Value Added Art 03

VAA – Value Added Art 03 (created between 2021 and 2023 by Dragan Z/M Ilic)

This artwork is a continuation of Ilic’s artistic experiments with his ubiquitous Samsung Android mobile phone, which he has been uniquely embellishing over the years. The artwork is a relatively heavy piece both in added weight and added symbolic and real value. The artist intuitively and playfully compounds and adds ornamentation to his art object, for the android phone contains both added value in the form of glued on international coinage and currency as well photographs of his more recent principal artworks and installations/environments. Crystal spheres and marbles have also been included representing wordplay with the Serbian idiom: “Umetnici rade za klikere” (this idiom when translated into English exactly corresponds to “artists are working for peanuts”) continuing his clever critique and bold discourse related to the social position, vulnerability and the generally underpaid creative labor by artists both on the domestic and international art scenes.