by featured artist Nikolina Lazetic 

lunar, untitled no.2
Medium: acrylic, oil, ink on paper (modified print)

My creative processes are informed by an upbringing in a war-torn space, mute losses and the subsequent experiences of displacement and abuse. A particular synesthesia prompts me to see an image or sentence as an opening into a foreclosed realm of traces, apertures, chipped memories and physical traumas. My practice privileges erasure and fragmentation, be it written and visual work.

slant echo
Medium: acrylic, wax and oil on paper

In writing, I seek to still a narrative so as to observe how words line and tangle the edges of our bodies, movements; in painting, I turn to a variety of mediums to erode and plunder visual forms to seek out an embodied presence in the traces of a disappearance. I rely on myth and concepts of the sacred sound in grains and broken textures; the aim is to achieve a kind of unity with the self through dispersion – to mend through shearing. My body of work aims to break into a tonality achieved by visual and narrative interplay of loss, desire and hope. 

adore you more
Medium: oil, wax, heated blade on a vintage photograph

Nikolina Lazetic

was born in Sarajevo and grew up scattered along the Adriatic coast. She holds an MFA from Brown University and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota. She lives in Minneapolis, for the most part, alongside dogs and her collection of scents and ephemera.