Horizon
Nataša KOKIĆ
Growing up, I used to imagine that there was a landscape behind the last row of houses that I could see from my balcony. I used to stand there at dusk, looking at the space between two houses, and since I couldn't see anything except sky and the top of one tree, I would imagine that there was a meadow leading into the hills, instead of a huge factory that was really there. I noticed that the balcony was turned westwards and that became symbolic to me. In the nineties, everyone in the surroundings thought that 'the west' meant spiritual freedom and a normal, relaxed life. That new life was so close, right behind that last row of houses.
My work is dealing with the relationship between the individual and society and how that relationship works; in what way society changes our views, our wishes and priorities. The works are depicting what sort of life we should lead, or what is offered in comparison to what we want. The scenes are cloaked with melancholy, owing to the fact that our preferences have changed and that our wishes and longings will perhaps never come true. Therefore, the paintings and drawings are creating a hermetic world, parallel to the one that exists.
My latest works are depicting what you might call 'safe places' – images and thoughts that can give us strength and will to persist. The drawings are representations of (non)places, spaces that don't have a defined theme, like a patch of grass between two buildings. Those spaces are intimate, a personification of some indeterminate desire, that is yet to be discovered; it leads us onwards and gives us potency to create new narrative.
Horizon, pencil on paper, 200 x 500 cm, 2011
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Nataša KOKIĆ
Nataša Kokić was born in 1979 in Belgrade. She graduated in 2005 at the Faculty of Art in Belgrade and got her master's degree at the same faculty in 2010. She had a dozen of solo exhibition in Serbia and a number of group exhibitions both in Serbia and abroad. Her recent exhibitions include Paper Sketches at the Remont Gallery, Belgrade and Horizon, paper drawing at the Magacin Gallery, Belgrade (solo project); Mixer Festival, Belgrade; Kunst Kamers Rotterdam, Home is where you hang your Art, Rotterdam, Holland; the exhibition of the 33rd summons of Art Colony of Jalovik at the gallery of the University Library Svetozar Marković, Belgrade in 2011.
Kontakt: natasa_kokic(at)hotmail.com