Untitled Drawing

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 country thought that “the west” meant spiritual freedom and a normal, relaxed life. That new life was so close, right behind that last row of house. When I got interested in art, the basis of my work was social (in) justice, about who decides what is to be done and how we are forced to change our attitudes and desires over time. I became interested in the functioning of society as a whole, in circumstances affecting us while becoming adults and how we are being shaped by the place where we grew up. In addressing the various impossibilities and overcoming them, I returned to the landscape as one of those circumstances that form us, or that we assemble ourselves by the way we live and project them through time. Isolated and remote areas drawn on large formats talk about the obstacles that we still need to cross, worries about the future (and possible outcomes) and the part of our lives that we can actually control. Landscape becomes a place of safety and hope, a place where we can find the strength to persevere in what we want. This is to remind us who we are and where we actually stand. Initially, the drawings were ilustrations of "non-places", spaces that did not have a defined theme, such as a piece of grass between two buildings. Gradually, they have changed into defined spaces - the great plains, mountains, foggy hills. These places are intimate, fabricated, form of some vague desire that leads us forward and gives us energy and strength to create new stories.