Self Portrait Through Everything I Am Not (Autoportret kroz sve što nisam) by Ana Mitrović, created in 2020 in Podgorica, Montenegro, stages a conceptual self-portrait built from the everyday lives of figures she refuses to become. Emerging against a backdrop of long-standing socio-political tensions in Montenegro, the series positions itself as a generational response to the norms, rituals, and hierarchies that shaped the artist's upbringing.
At the core of the project is a sustained act of self-examination. Mitrović constructs her identity through opposition, defining herself against eight stereotypical representatives of her surrounding society. These figures embody primitivism, petty-bourgeois attitudes, ideological and religious exclusivism, and a broader provincial spirit. By inhabiting each stereotype, she identifies the social, religious, and political conditions she rejects and turns these oppositions into a composite image of the self. The viewer is invited into the same exercise, testing their own position in relation to the roles on display.
Each of the eight photographs presents Mitrović both as author and object, performing a different character within the confines of domestic interiors. Gesture, costume, make-up, scenography, and lighting are used to emphasize recognizable traits: a tilt of the head, a cluttered table, or a devotional object hints at wider systems of belief and behavior. The atmosphere oscillates between simplicity and unease, allowing banality, philosophy, art, feminism, and tradition to occupy the same frame.
Technically, the project is shot with a digital camera and adopts the visual language of casual family or friendship snapshots. Behind this informal surface lies a planned approach to sets, props, and poses, so that minor awkwardness in body language and unedited domestic details feel intentional rather than incidental. Direct flash in some frames flattens perspective and produces hard-edged shadows, while in others, saturated color pushes the interiors toward kitsch, highlighting how the roles played within them drift toward gentle exaggeration and quiet irony.
First exhibited in Montenegro, the series received an Honorable Mention in the Portrait category at the 2022 Sarajevo Photography Festival and has since reappeared in regional and international contexts, including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro’s exhibition Living Images (2024).
