In her work, visual artist Jelena Bando explores man’s relationship with nature in different ways, focusing on current environmental issues. In the piece Fate, which she will present at the Street Gallery, she uses nature as a metaphor for exploring the existential themes of life, death and impermanence. She thus views fate symbolically as a sandstorm that follows one’s life and changes it.
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in.” – Jelena Bando
Jelena Bando is an academically trained painter who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2012. She has attended study visits and residencies in Germany (Wurzburg, Berlin), France (Paris) and Croatia (Kuberton). She has held 17 solo exhibitions in Croatia, Germany, Sweden, and France, and participated in around 30 group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. She has won two awards for drawing and graphic arts (SKC Gallery, Belgrade; 15th Biennial of Drawing, Belgrade). In 2013, she started the project 36 Mountains, which has grown into a renowned festival of illustration and drawing.
The DobraVaga Gallery 3rd anniversary programme continues at 7 PM with the opening of the visiting exhibition of the 36 Mountains international festival of illustration at the DobraVaga Gallery.
Free entry.
Organisation: Kino Šiška and TAM-TAM mestni plakati. The artists’ residency is made possible with the help of Republic of Slovenia Public Fund for Cultural Activities.
