Nada Milošević’s Bodies in Transition: Trance, Allegory, and the Fragmented Self

Although Dante’s imagery originates from medieval Christian allegory, its profound moral and existential depth aligns seamlessly with the introspective themes central to Milošević’s work. Rather than overshadowing personal intensity, Dante’s epic scale amplifies it, forging a creative tension between interior, trance-like spaces and the grand landscapes of the Inferno. In a largely secular global art discourse, the invocation of a centuries-old cosmology underscores how allegory can still bridge personal artistic visions with universal moral questions. Her decision to draw on these medieval references suggests that religious or mythic frameworks remain powerfully resonant, even outside their original context. In this way, her work carries Dante’s universal themes into the contemporary psyche, where transitional bodies reflect a timeless search for meaning, bound to states of suffering and transcendence.

The One We Are Closer To (2018) from the N.V.T.B. exhibition by Nada Milošević

To experience these artworks is to enter a vast, unstable inner cosmos—shaped as much by spiritual energy as by the fragmented lines and dissolving forms that structure her imagery. Figures appear exposed and unraveling, suspended between dissolution and reassembly, resisting fixed meaning—fleeting, elusive, and emotionally charged. Trance, in Milošević’s view, is a vehicle for transformation—where the self is fragmented, witnessed, and reassembled. This process reflects a conscious departure from everyday awareness, as the artist explains: “There are moments when I place myself above me, observing myself and trying to set things right. I materialize this and present it.” By doing so, Milošević allows for a clearer observation of emotional and psychological terrain, creating space for self-witnessing and transformation. Each canvas invites a quiet confrontation that suggests a journey toward awareness.

In a broader postmodern context where irony and skepticism often shape artistic discourse, Milošević’s direct engagement with transcendence feels quietly radical. Her work doesn’t lean on detachment or parody, but instead embraces a spiritual dimension that invites viewers to treat introspection not as retreat, but as a generative force within contemporary practice. The artist articulates this orientation succinctly: Space as an element of composition is my inner space... an infinite space filled with Energy, where bodies simultaneously exist and do not exist. Here, space is not a backdrop or container, but an active inner terrain where presence and absence, form and dissolution, continuously intertwine. These figures exist in a state of duality, both visible and erased, placing the work between real experience and imagined perception. Within this expanded interior, perception becomes unstable, continually stretching toward new thresholds where reality and imagination collapse into one another.

Nadmihail (2018) from the N.V.T.B. exhibition by Nada Milošević

Purgatorio, detail of Nadmihail

Expanding on this inner dynamic, Milošević writes: “There are moments when I place myself above me, observing myself and trying to set things right. I materialize this and present it.” This process reflects a conscious departure from everyday awareness, a state of inward detachment that allows for clearer observation of emotional and psychological terrain. By translating moments of self-witnessing into tangible form, she confronts personal tension and fragmentation while offering viewers space to reflect on their own internal landscapes. Through this process, her deeply personal experience transforms into a shared encounter that resonates with the viewer. Trance functions as an initiatory passage, similar to Dante’s descent through the Inferno—a symbolic journey driven not by choice, but by existential necessity. Her figures hover between dissolution and emergence, embodying a continual cycle of disintegration and reassembly. Unlike Dante’s eternally condemned souls, the artist’s subjects suggest the possibility of liberation. Their unraveling marks the shedding of past suffering and the opening of a path toward renewal.

Yet questions linger, drawing in the intellect without offering answers. How clearly can trance, a subjective and internal experience, manifest visually? This artistic universe is sincere in its vision, but it demands surrender over interpretation, immersion over analysis. The more one attempts to interpret these figures, the further they move from clarity, slipping into a space of elusive emotional resonance—compelling yet subtly disquieting. This ambiguity, with its seductive frustration, is what makes her engagement with Dante’s symbolism so compelling. Like Dante lost in the dark wood, the viewer is asked to abandon any expectation of clarity. Instead, we must move inward, accepting confusion as integral to the pilgrimage. Paradise, Purgatory, and Inferno coexist simultaneously here, revealed only through a trance that suspends linear time and logic. This suspension is central to Milošević’s voice, aligning her practice with contemporary art’s hunger for complexity and its resistance to easy answers.

She elaborates further on the symbolic spaces forming a conceptual framework: “The Above,” “The Now,” and “The Nearer.” The “Above” symbolizes an aspirational realm, transcendent yet elusive, while the “Now” embodies immediate psychological realities and internal tensions, and the “Nearer” represents the external, imperfect world influenced by collective struggles. Together, these spaces deepen her exploration of both inner and outer realities, reinforcing the layered psychological and mythic structure of the work. These symbolic spaces challenge linear time by suggesting a cyclical model of existence. Her compositions suggest the dissolution of chronological boundaries, allowing past, present, and future to merge into a fluid existential narrative. This perspective challenges conventional notions of time, emphasizing timelessness and infinite introspection as central themes in her practice.

Her framework also reveals an interplay between psychoanalytic introspection and religious symbolism. While the three conceptual spaces could be read as archetypal states reminiscent of Jungian or Freudian depth psychology, they remain grounded in the Dantean moral cosmos, creating a tension between internal drives and transcendent aspirations. This blend of psychological self-inquiry and medieval allegory heightens the transformative stakes at the core of her practice. The intensity and psychological impact of the color palette further enhance the immersive quality of these works. Rendered predominantly in deep reds and stark blacks, the colors directly reference Dante’s Inferno, with red evoking intense emotional suffering and black representing despair and the depths of the human psyche. These choices deepen the emotional charge of the work, guiding viewers toward self-examination. The tension between vivid emotion and profound emptiness mirrors the internal conflicts that run throughout her practice.

Recurring imagery of fragmented, distorted bodies becomes a metaphor for human vulnerability and the ongoing search for identity. These figures, tethered by lines as thin and sharp as memory, reflect internal struggles and the weight of collective experience. Memory, with its ability to distort perception, intensifies the fragmentation of the body—reinforcing themes of identity loss, vulnerability, and the possibility of self-reconstruction. Her work echoes the idea of collective memory inscribed within personal experience. Her canvases function as emotional and existential vessels, opening an intangible space between artist and viewer. By inviting audiences into a space that is both personal and universally accessible, the work fosters communal reflection and emotional inquiry. This communal aspect underscores our interconnectedness, revealing how personal introspection can carry a collective resonance.

T.F.I. (2016) by Nada Milošević

Dante’s symbolic journey through moral and existential realms finds renewed resonance here. Both Dante and this artist employ vivid imagery to confront and navigate personal and universal turmoil, offering profound reflections on human fragility and resilience. Through her invocation of Dante, Milošević enters into a long-standing tradition of seeking truth through introspection. Her work reimagines this tradition in visual form, expressing the timeless tension between darkness and light, despair and hope, fragmentation and wholeness.

Yet it remains to be seen whether Dante’s grand moral architecture can fully merge with an intensely personal mythmaking, or if the friction between medieval allegory and subjective trance is precisely where this practice finds its greatest power. That tension between inherited narrative and private revelation anchors each piece in a space of ongoing questioning and reinvention, giving the work a distinct sense of contemporary urgency.

In the end, Milošević’s work feels less like a definitive statement than an incantation. It is a deep act of searching. These canvases whisper that art, much like trance, is about becoming rather than being—a place where the self may be at once lost and profoundly discovered. In confronting these visions, viewers find their reflections splintered into fragments, mirrored in bodies that echo Dante’s tragic vision yet reach perpetually toward redemption. The trance belongs to both creator and observer, forming a shared dreamscape whose beauty lies in its unresolved complexity.

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Nada Milošević (b. 1992, Cetinje, Montenegro) is a visual artist whose work investigates themes of memory, identity, and displacement through painting, drawing, and installation. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje and the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, earning distinctions such as the Faculty of Fine Arts Cetinje award for Best Student and honors for her interpretation of Montenegrin Independence. Milošević has exhibited in Montenegro, Serbia, and Bulgaria, including the Third International Student Drawing Biennial in Sofia, and has presented solo shows at the Contemporary Art Centre of Montenegro and the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad.