My work
In addition to drawings, nude sketches, engravings in various forms an travel notebooks, I work mostly with acrylic paint on canvas and use mixed techniques on paper or other materials.
In my work I am primarily interested in the body and its complexity. In my paintings, apart from the nudes I sketch for practice, I keep away from a realistic representation of nature through deeper reflection seeking a more abstract expression.
My source of inspiration is often literature, in particular “Hymnodia to mou somati” (Hymn to my Body), a long poem by the Croatian poet Augustin Tin Ujević. I named many of my works and several exhibitions in Prague, Berlin and Zagreb after the Greek title of this poem. The artist’s book “Textiles -Text’îles - îles de textes” (ERASMUS Publishers - Zagreb - 1998) combines extracts of poems by Augustin Tin Ujević with paintings.
The project “focus Szymborska” brought together various European female artists (from Poland, Germany and France) who found inspiration in texts by the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (Nobel Price in Literature 1996) Their various works, using diverse techniques, including engraving, photography, painting and installation, were first exhibited in Berlin at the Inselgalerie in August 2005 and later in Stargast, Poland.
Installations
The installations “Traces de vie” (Traces of Life) (inspired by Tin Ujević) shown at the Čapek Gallery in Prague and “Le choix” (The Choice) (after a poem by Szymborska) shown at the Inselgalerie in Berlin, complement canvasses and collages on the same themes. For these Installations I have almost exclusively used the fabric of old bed sheets which have been accompanied human beings from birth to death.
As part of exhibition „Evas Töchter” (Eve’s Daughters) at the Inselgalerie in Berlin, the installation „Frauen der Revolution” (women of the French Revolution) presented Théroigne de Méricourt, Manon Roland and Olympe de Gouges, three women who were leading figures of the revolutionary movement and were eliminated (guillotined or locked away in psychiatric asylum) by their male counterparts in the name of anti-feminism notorious in the land of human rights where the rights of women are ignored. On strips of canvas measuring 350 cm by 65 cm, showing portraits and quotations which tell the story of their lives, tailor dummies evoke the death or madness that sealed their fate.
“Weg der Sinne” (The Way of the Senses) is an installation which was exhibited in the garden of Centre Bagatelle in Berlin. It is an itinerary taking the visitor on a barefoot tour across various materials - hard, soft and creaky surfaces - through porticoes from which strips of fabric hang and brush against the face and body to release simulating fragrances. The visitor’s eye is caught by the colours of the strips whose subtle nuances from violet to red suggest a rainbow.