Nature is my homeland
Year: 2019-2020 / 2022
The "Nature is my Homeland" project was a two-year international endeavor (2019-2020) involving various creative activities such as workshops, seminars, artistic research, symposiums, and publications. Artists from four partner institutions in Belgrade, Krakow, Alabama, and Trier participated, including professors and students. The project was led by the Academy of Fine Arts, Jan Metejko in Krakow and funded by NAWA, the Polish national agency for international academic partner programs. I participated in the project during their third year at the Faculty of Fine Arts and attended a seven-day workshop. The workshop was held in a remote area in Zakopane, Poland and focused on exploring the relationship between nature and art.
My work "Imperceptible" shows a coordinate system and an image. The stone that was used during the creation of the work as a foundation and as the very beginning of the creative process was used as a template for the painting, and then it was set to the coordinates for the final stage. The stone bears with it everything in nature that surrounds us, that gives us a foundation and safeguards our memory. Stone is the trace of our foundation that remains unseen. To paint the surface surrounding stone elevates and adds to the trace that represents that which man leaves in his foundation after himself. The stone symbolism that appears in this work is stone as a witness of time - locked in the ground, undeterred. This work exemplifies the inferiority of man in the face of the stone. By attempting to understand all that lies in a stone's essence or memory, man accentuates his own helplessness. Therefore man can only ever reflect on that which he has added to history. Anything before his era represents a void lacking his presence.
I left my original artwork at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In 2022, I created a new piece using stones I collected from the Drina river near Tavna.
