“My art evolved from working on a fragmented collection of seemingly unrelated projects to comprehensive research with a focus on the concept. Every part of my research directly influences other parts and provokes further research. I explore how cultural heterogeneity can be expressed in an art form through painting, drawing, collage, screen printing, and fibre art. The main driving force is a search for a semiotic, abstract visual language based on the ideas evocative of a displaced life. Some examples of this symbolism in my pieces are fragmentation, folding, patterning, and structural damage.”
Through her artwork, Tatjana seeks to reconcile her relation to the disparate places she calls home: Serbia, which she left as a young adult, and Canada, where she lives now. She is interested in how a heterogeneous cultural identity affects creativity and how new artistic connections are made between old and new references.
Tatjana’s visual vocabulary is influenced by geometric abstract expressionism. She combines her native cultural memories, such as Serbian ethnic motifs and nostalgia for the naivety of Yugoslav utopia, with the contemporary concerns of Western Canada, with its complicated history and endangered future.