Familiar Characters is a photographic series depicting the journey of an adult revisiting childhood, created in Serbia over 3 years. Despite growing up in the aftermath of war, my family’s efforts to preserve the normality and happiness of my childhood allowed me to develop a deep connection and fascination with that time in my life. In that process of returning to my early years, I became a little kid again, playing with toys and creating imaginary kingdoms. Soon enough, memories acquired a strange appeal as I began to piece together a wider picture of events from my early years. I returned to my hometown, finding myself in the old family house and the landscapes surrounding it. In an attempt to preserve a naive memory of childhood, I began painting it over with vivid colors and filling it with playful characters. The uncanny feeling grew stronger as this adventure of an adult revisiting childhood took a strange turn, making me both its host and visitor. The boundaries between past and present, or memory and fact, blurred and became insignificant. My world became one big playground, a field for building new memories and fantasies. As I reimagined my past, these fragmented recollections took on a more universal meaning, becoming a lens through which I explored deeper themes of identity and belonging. Familiar Characters evolved into a personal mythology, not only an exploration of my childhood but also a broader reflection on human nature and our need to preserve our sacred (inner) places.

Individual autonomous criticism is formed through a recursive and third-world relationship with technology. Wide access to different offline and online media, such as digital cameras, smartphones, computers, video game systems, social networks and interconnection platforms, has generated a more spatial and three-dimensional brain vision of the way we communicate with others. It has also influenced how We connect local and global ideas to express emotions, thoughts and disagreements. The project ‘Terminal Tears /The feminine urge to…’ presents ways to kill identity archetypes through technology as a weapon that cleans and reconstructs the memory of new generations. It contains a printed zine, with original work and screenshots through different platforms, plastic casted swords, video works and audio installation.

White Bee explores the forgotten matriarchal lineage in a patriarchal context, delving into themes of memory, female identity, and family connections. It bridges the distant past with personal reflections on womanhood and future legacies while examining the emotional, cultural, metaphysical, and biological connections between generations of women in the family as the artist reflects on her role in this continuum. In my grandmother’s house, I found a family tree drawn by a distant relative in 1971, along with a letter to my great-grandfather. It traced our family’s migration from Bosnia and Albania to Montenegro in the 14th and 15th centuries, listing generations of men by name. But one mention stood out—the foremother of our family fraternities, whose name was lost to time, overshadowed by patriarchy. In Serbian tradition, the earliest female ancestor is bela pčela (white bee). The meaning of this term remains unclear, especially since family trees rarely acknowledge women. However, she is believed to appear in the whiteness of the fog of memory, swarming in our consciousness, reminding us she is still here. Mine succeeded in that. Her presence raised questions about history, memory, and the erased role of women in patriarchal lineage. Discovering my white bee made me reflect on my own experiences as a woman—grappling with themes of fertility, inheritance, and the deep bonds with my mother, aunts, sisters, and grandmothers. By searching the past, I uncovered her presence hidden between the written lines. Now, as I look ahead, I find myself asking—will I become a white bee to someone?

What are relationships made of? Are they meant to last? Does „forever“ exist, or is it a childhood dream of love, bound by family? Is mathematics fixed, or is it relative? Does 1+1 always equal 2, or can it be 1+1=1, as Tarkovsky suggests in Nostalghia? In one of my most transformative relationships, the one that gave me my daughter, I like to think 1+1=3 — not just a sum, but a fusion. After that relationship ended, I questioned everything and started anew. I learned that „forever“ isn’t static, but fluid — like a dance, sometimes solo, sometimes with a partner, sometimes with many, always shifting. With TWO, I explore relationships through my photographic archive — a playful meditation on the meaning of „two.“ My equation for „two“ has never quite returned to a simple sum. It represents balance, union and separateness, complementary forces in a dance of constant embrace — capturing fleeting, private moments that feel universally true.

While working between photography, sculpture, and installation, focusing on the physical properties of image-making materials, I engaged directly with materials, shaping their transformation through experimental processes. Photography often demands precision, but I am more interested in revealing what is usually unseen—its textures, vulnerabilities, and breaking points. Within the project, I worked with a variety of materials, transitioning from photographic thinking to sculptural interpretation, exploring how they evolved and intersected in new ways. The process was key—working with fire, heat, and chemical reactions, I allowed materials to respond in their own way. My approach was intuitive, hands-on, and open-ended. The work remained in flux, never fully complete and still evolving. Beyond material transformation, repetition and sustained observation played an essential role. By repeatedly engaging with the same processes, I emphasized subtle shifts in the material’s response, positioning myself as both creator and observer of change. I exposed photographic paper to light and intervened with fire, uncovering hidden structures within its surface. Film, as another light-sensitive material, reacted differently— I pushed it to its limits, exploring the threshold between formation and collapse. Some works retained a connection to photography through chemical treatments, while others deconstructed film to its most basic form, reducing it to transparent layers dyed in symbolic darkroom colors.