Full Transcript
i was born in cerro bosnia and fitzgerald at the time it was part of the former socialistic republic of yugoslavia federative socialist republic of yugoslavia and came here as a refugee of the war-torn country as i said it was formerly slaughtered and disintegrated into different states and in 1997 i arrived to dallas for the area through catholic charities organization well i think i've been artists ever since okay uh i remember really this as a kid i would lay on a couch like bed was a tv there was a show about an artist professor talking about art and i would be by myself in the room
i couldn't understand what and why but the environment where i grew up wasn't that art prone environment i would say and but i always had that inclination i wanted to study philosophy and art but i finished to actually military high school so but always wanted to do art and i guess when i came to the united states of america i was able to disconnect with that kind of cultural influence of near family or overall environment and by being alone i was able to guide myself towards something i actually wanted to do it wasn't straight line it was kind of legal but i wanted to do
graphic design i did study computer science in chicago in 1999 2001 came back to dallas again kind of going on in north as i said and i wanted to do graphic design i decided to do graphic design i went to brookhaven college i said okay i'm going to take drawing class i took a drawing class there you go professor don taylor approached me he said do you want to do print making i said what is print making guy no he said just take the class i said okay and that's how it happened and uh i guess i was relieved i loved it and uh just
something since really i was a kid i wanted to do it's just that sometimes it's not easy so and now i went there's a brookhaven college and i'm going to wash my rest in the same place get my undergrad and graduate degrees and now i'm back to dallas and i'm actively watching having some exhibitions around i think i i myself am not sure i've been thinking about it really i've been thinking about my style uh sometimes people would tell me it's like four different people doing four different things uh i would say maybe rough prone by mistakes and through mistakes trying to find the solution
almost reflecting my life yeah okay and uh i do drawings i love drawings but i'm not this hyper rendering type of artist but through these mistakes i'm kind of getting something final that i like i guess really woody allen say like in this one of his movies like does art reflect life or life reflect right yeah say my primary medium is if i can say okay i'm doing sil screen right but i rather not seriously that's not something that i'm i would say industrially mass produced product okay because the print making is actually the the production of multiples i got drawn to it because of
the this democratic nature of the media right so that's something that in in relation maybe to painting where you have a one single object in the print making you can make multiples and they can as such they might be able to be more accessible to people that was a some of my naive approaches but since then it did leave a kind of undertone which later on i was thinking about that not print making as a print making technique which is like etching entirely or sales cream doing cell screen now because of the way how it goes technologically is executed can be applied to different surfaces
right but rather multiplicity and accessibility because i'm i was after my graduate school i was doing websites as my art right so that you still have that concept of matrix which is let's say server that has your files and can be accessed as you access you get in the instance i study computer science too so as you go to web server the matrix you get the instance a print but everyone on planet earth can access it right so i said that's my printmaking right which is kind of in the terms of formal traditional printmaking is not but i wasn't drawn to it i was rather
drawn to the ideas what they represent in relation to the society and our understanding of it what i'm doing now is as i said i'm doing silk screen because of the possibilities of applying on different surfaces i'm doing uh sandbags uh because i was uh in afghanistan for about four or five years and one of my part of the job was to put the sandbags around the buildings bunkers and whatnot with the local afghani labor forces and other labor forces from throughout the world and uh when i came back here i decided to kind of utilize that sil screen but not just still screen so
that's one thing then i'm using these industrially printed mesh banners banners so there's this interest of mass produced project as i said earlier so that they also so i have these multiple directions so i speak of the story but then i also addressed the the the industrial nature of our civil presence civilization right and then kind of also make some circle of presence so i'm trying to utilize the technology i'm trying to be aware of my time and i live in 21st century and sometimes like the let's say i was studying as a foreign print maker there is a tendency to stay in that media
i'm interested rather in the concepts and ideas what they mean and how they reflect saying that that means that my process can be right uh actually i was doing artwork for just facebook so i do something that can be only viewed on facebook and that was my biggest problem because i didn't know how am i going to move from facebook to put in a gallery i cannot because it's made for facebook for the interface of facebook yeah so i it's a really being aware of the present which is 21st century it's technology in relationship to the historical background of the of the art and how
that reflects into and how i as an artist utilize it to speak through it okay that's i after like all these years [Music] i remember i started when i started some drawings back there they were kind of dark and violent but then i was thinking about it and it's easy to move into that right and when i was in afghanistan i remember like sitting like and looking drinking coffee in the morning and i'm thinking like is there anything else really yeah and i'm like sitting and i'm looking for these sandbags and i see a small flower coming through and i'm looking at it like there
you go so you are the answer you know life the hope that small one that goes through so i decided to rather i'm not ignorant of what life can bring upon us right but i want on purpose to focus on us talking making fun of it joking taking pictures of it and then those positive moments i want to imprint on these sandbags which actually represent war yeah but then on these sandbags i have these images of relaxed friendship oriented gatherings and all my videos of afghani local population singing love songs right and those or the pictures of the flowers those rough of ghani flowers going
through these sandbags right trying to to break through all these signs of hope and even though they're small and weak i guess if they were not strong enough they wouldn't be around so i'm using it that's my topic and i'm trying to address through different political means of visual communication though i'm aware of the culture very much especially in a parallel because for me things don't happen just i just spoke to my friend life is not black and white life is grey and i was studying uh trying to i'm an atheist but i'm very interested in religion because i wanted to understand everything especially what's
happened in my country through that it took me back to the birth period of christianity etc right and through that you know i learned about judaism right early over there and how those things influence each other uh if i think i'm not now when you've mentioned that i can see that struggle is everywhere and through that struggle we look into hope as a leading light yeah how do we interpret that that's up to civilization and artist at the time and period to find the way out right but i can see it actually now and you mentioned that i'm glad you did it's like that's a
search for hope through struggle yeah i guess you know um i never been that much color artist right i was more feeling artist and then what comes out of it might have some maybe kind of dark tone in a sense but through the dark tone i'm looking for some light what would the color be you have two colors blue and green i blue sky and green grass uh sand bags are kind of green i'm using them because they're military gray sandbags they kind of but they used all different but poetically wise it's a green kind of color of right military but yet it's color of
grass right but then you have blue sky right so maybe those or you can see them actually now in this exhibition that i have with this uh installation you really actually can see that now when you mention that you can see the green sandbags and then you have photographs with the kind of root yes uh i won't actually then you will see actually the one of the words is very powerful it is actually blue red and black and uh that's a one will be that i plan to share two one is the photography of that flower i mentioned to you right you remember when i
mentioned the flower i took the photograph of that so that's uh and i used that photograph over there for the exhibition we did at university of texas dallas last and now it's in the latino cultural center part of this art 214 okay and that's the one photograph that my flower which i call my little right and uh because that's that little flower that's trying to break through these sandbags which were eaten by the wind and sun and rain and then next to it is this concrete block right which we usually have around and the other is actually the other work is the portrait i did
a friend of mine from bosnia because in afghanistan about 30 percent of working force are people from the balkans right i wasn't aware of it so my friend zoran vuleta he was part of the team over there working for the government through this company for and i was doing portraiture of people there so i did his portrait and that work i really love that work because of what it means him is my friend but also it's a story uh of traveling from all these different corners to somewhere else right and that's the story of trouble uh that is actually interesting media because i was practicing
trade trying to find some new approach a few different utilization of sill screen and some type of so-called calligraph which i really like to do but i was trying to combine them plus within italia so that piece that's colorful and that speaks of that journey with the i guess we all travel for hope yeah and our last question is what is something you want viewers to know or take away from your artwork try be better than what you are at the moment at least little let's be we all do our best in life and uh as i said it's a struggle and we try to
make our best and i hope that with my work i can just like a balloon push it a little bit that's it okay well thank you so much for your time karen you're welcome thank you very much you
