EMBERS
17.03.2022 to 03.04.2022
Galleria Himmelblau
NATALIJA DAKOVIC
Natalija Dakovic (b. 1998) is a multimedia artist that draws, paints, animates, and writes. She is a storyteller and aims to communicate deeply through her work. Dakovic has been drawn to semi-fiction because it is a way to share herself with an audience without making the work purely about herself, but rather about more universal experiences. The book, Orienting: A Walk Through a Semi-fictional Landscape of Experiences, explores the broadness of experience and uses the protagonist to navigate them.
Dakovic was born in Espoo, Finland, and was given the name Nikola. She lived most of her life abroad, first in Hungary and then In Serbia, and studied briefly in Ireland and South Korea. At the age of 18, she started going through a gender transition and started living as a girl. Having lived in many different places and having lived both as a guy and a girl, has shaped her perspective on life and the different perceptual realities we inhabit, how our environment shapes us, and how we can shape our environment.
ORIENTING
A Walk Through a Semi-fictional Landscape of Experiences
Orienting: A Walk Through a Semi-fictional Landscape of Experiences was created in the spirit of the phrase: “Fiction is a lie that allows us to see the truth.”
Although our experiences might be different, they all happen in the context of reality – and that connects us. Orienting uses its characters to explore how one finds their way in a strange, intense, and confusing world. Dakovic aims to have the broadest, deepest possible experiences and it is a key factor in her artmaking. Taking her experiences and processing them through art creates a positive feedback loop where life inspires art and art inspires life.
Dakovic has selected art from the last 6 years of her career for her book. The book contains many different forms of written and visual language – containing drawings, poems and written narratives.