Born 1998 in Croatia. Graphic artist.
Being affected by the pandemic emotionally and mentally is hard to miss.
Mihaela Podboj
Pandemic, lockdowns, quarantines – they’ve all affected the way we publish and exhibit our works as visual artists. It is extremely difficult to find Art projects and applications that aren’t based online.
I find it extremely beneficial seeing how other artists have changed in the past year. I certainly have changed a lot – from a day-to-day life to the over all craziness my mind wants me to tranfer in visual arts.
Web has its pros and cons, I am trying to think positively though. In a gallery, museum, or any type of exhibition space you know how many people have seen your exhibited work, but when there’s an online exhibition you can’t know that information. Maybe you can ask for a number of clicks per page, but you don’t know if someone spent a long time in front of your work, or just a second. That’s the thing – they aren’t even in front of your work, they are in front of a screen.
I’ve seen other artists turn to a more digitalized art because it always looks the same on every device. I believe that this situation has made our attention spam shorter because people have never used social media more. I am an example for that as well, and I see how harder it is for me to concentrate. It has opened my mind towards thinking quickly, digitally, and I also take in account that my art becomes accessible and quicker to understand. I still overthink as much as I used to, maybe even more.
Being affected by the pandemic emotionally and mentally is hard to miss. Hence, my works has never changed this drastically in a short time. I could see my psyche slowly deteriorating while things would get worse for me and people I love. It bleeds into my work and is easily recognizable. I started using more thread in my works, ironically, trying to tie my stories together and understand my perception. It’s a work in progress.
World’s in a progress too, since the beginning – only now we are realizing it.
“Artist book – Book of trying” is a book that consists of 19 pages in photographic techniques Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown, binded in a Japanese book binding technique. Transferred motifs are texts, poems and photos made in late 2020. In two said photographic techniques it’s advised you create test images before you chose which one aligns with your idea and the final result. However, I chose tests, scrapped material and “incorrectly“ made photos to bind in an artist book. Wanting to shed a light on a process of creating, this work reminds us of fragility, disintegration and transience of life being expressed through visual image during an imperfect environment and unfavorable conditions.
“Transition” is about researching melancholy. Catching frames/motifs/words that triggered melancholy for months resulted in a realization that whats within, that inspires me most, will shape shift and slowly disappear into something else. Challenging aspect was letting go of control over what overcomes me, hence awakening curiosity of where, emotions we like to avoid, might take us.
Art project #365daysafter