House Without a Ground, art installation comprised of drawings, is a narrative composition of complex and layered character in which Ines Matijević Cakić expresses various subjective experiences. It is formed with elastic threads stretched in space and positioned at different heights and directions, creating an intertwined network of lines. Drawings, figurative scenes, and details from the author’s home in pencil on paper are placed in the sections in between.

Ines’s entire opus is of a strongly auto-referential quality, and these features are clearly present in this work as well. Reflections on the past situations through symbolic images and motifs, contemplations of everyday life with its unexpected and unpredictable circumstances, and a variety of emotional states is seen in each individual drawing, as well as the installation as a whole. By probing into intimate spheres and by visualizing what has been experienced, Ines analyzes her state of mind, articulates new thought processes, and modifies perception and impact of certain personal moments. Her work provides her with space for creative re-examination through artistic practice.

Every drawing in House Without a Ground is a scene from the artist’s home, and every detail is an attempt to ponder over certain life events. According to her own words, Ines sees her home as an extension of her identity, which could mean that home delineates and determines one’s personal identity, or at least the way identity reveals and exposes itself in the home environment in a most direct manner.

Study of the bonds between private and public space is yet another feature of the installation. Its content is projected onto contemporary society, on the world in which boundaries between private and public sphere are all the more fluid, while homes become places that are shared and exposed on virtual communication platforms. One of the starting points of House Without a Ground is an attempt to understand and make sense of private home space and public space, which in this case is represented by the museum exhibition area.
The dimension of space is an important factor in Ines’s work. Besides having a figurative significance, we also perceive it as a physical component in which the installation is materialized: the grouping of its elements is dependent on spatial arrangement, empty parts become integral components of the artpiece while the interrelation between the blankness and fullness are essential for the visual impression of the whole drawing. At the same time, the installation activates the space, highlights its special features and mitigates its flaws. Although House Without a Ground has been created for a specific space where it would be placed, it is modular and can be adapted to any exhibition setting.

The exhibited drawings communicate both with the space and the elastic threads installation, and at the same time complement and permeate each other thematically and contextually. Glass Eyelids, as the starting point in the installation, is a piece of furniture from the author’s home, a china cabinet in which the internal and external space are reflected: vegetal motif (leaves) and architectural element (door). Drawings of identical motifs are displayed in such a way as to relate to the actual features in the author’s immediate surroundings. Next comes the drawing named Hindered Growth, an image of an olive tree ripped out of the soil, with the exposed roots conveying a symbolism of duality: the roots stand for firmness and safety while simultaneously hinting at possible fragility and impermanence. A drawing entitled Grounds shows an enlarged detail of the root, just like Framed Surface shows an enlarged detail of the china cabinet, with a crumpled piece of paper in it. Paper is a medium that records something and is written on, it retains thoughts and different information that are to be safeguarded for good or just notes that are not meant to last. Both situations suggest the flow of time. The previously mentioned Formatted Surface shows an enlarged crumpled piece of paper that can be associated with a sheet of paper containing architectural or construction blueprint. Architectural motifs appear several times in House Without a Ground. One of them is a staircase with a landing. The staircase symbolizes the idea of ascending, a shift upwards or descending, in this case coming down to the ground of the house, to the base, to the artist’s home.

If we view the overall artistic production of Ines Matijević Cakić, it becomes obvious that her artwork is a result of an ongoing dialogue with her personal experiences; in the same manner, the installation is inspired by the circumstances in which Ines finds herself, more precisely, the situation when her house was being renovated and its foundation exposed, all of this happening at the same time when the COVID pandemic and a strong earthquake occurred. The atmosphere of uncertainty and fear has been transferred from the external to a personal level, while the visual records reveal thoughts that emerge in unfamiliar and hopeless situations.

Large format pencil drawings on paper with motifs of spaces in which the artist lives, details of the interior and vegetal items are executed through meticulous toning of light and shade. The artist uses graphic paper that absorbs the pencil pigment well, resulting in pronounced softness of the drawing. The edges of the paper are torn by hand, some with more precision and others roughly, to highlight the unevenness of paper. This method emphasizes the genuine nature of the medium, that is, drawing as a basic technique that notes down the original idea and initiates every piece of art.

Drawing segments in the installation are connected with stretched elastic threads which give an impression of lines extended into space. The intervention is thus perceived as a drawing with an added dimension of spatiality. At the same time, the dense network recollects the artist’s childhood games in which counting rhymes accompanied the weaving of threads creating complex forms that had to be untwined and unraveled. In the like manner, one has to find solutions to real life situations that sometimes seem desperate. Associations to children’s games represent a ludic element that lightens the real-life burden.

In her House Without a Ground, Ines Matijević Cakić deals with themes of a long-standing artistic interest. She talks of an intimate living space, expresses her experiences related to home and family, explores emotional states of fear, uncertainty and instability caused by external circumstances beyond our control. By positioning threads into space, she visualizes the idea of a corridor, of finding a way out of unfamiliar and uncertain situations, which we may interpret as her contemplations on a personal level, but also more generally, as thoughts about circumstances in the society.

Vilma Bartolić

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Moju obitelj čine dvoje malene djece i suprug. Svakodnevno stvaramo svoj dom u Osijeku promišljajući različite modele kako si osigurati kvalitetan život i prostor u kojem živimo i koji bi zadovoljio sve naše potrebe.

Naš obiteljski život započeo je u malenom stančiću koji smo nakon nekoliko godina zamijenili nešto većim u kojem trenutno živimo. Tijekom narednih godina nastavili smo potragu za još većim životnim prostorom. Uronili smo u različite računalne mreže i ostvarili komunikaciju s brojnim agentima nekretnina te brojnim privatnim prodavateljima koji koriste različite modele oglašavanja. Obilaženje brojnih stanova za prodaju i susreti s njihovim Vlasnicima stvorili su jednu novu sliku našeg grada. Vlasnici stanova, vrlo često mladi ljudi na putu su za nastavak života drugdje, u Zagrebu, Njemačkoj, Austriji, Skandinavskim zemljama… Ili su to njihovi roditelji budući da su im djeca otišla te im žele financijski pomoći… Nemaju potrebu za velikim stanom, nemaju za grijanje, režije, imaju ovrhe.

Kroz našu obiteljsku potragu dobili smo priliku sagledati grad „iznutra“. Ta nova slika ovoga grada plaši, čak zastrašuje. Iako, naoko, bi se moglo reći da je upravo sada „pravo vrijeme“ za mladu obitelj da si priušti komforan stan u Osijeku, budući da su cijene nekretnina niže nego ikada, u meni se probudila sumnja da kupimo stan u gradu u kojem nestaju domovi i životi, a nastaju novi ogromni napušteni prostori koji gube značenje, funkciju i vrijednost.

Slika grada „iznutra“ akromatska je, odzvanja prazninom i tišinom kojom plove fragmenti nečijih života uronjeni u odbačene osobne predmete, namještaj, prašinu.

U radu Mrtva priroda promišljam sliku grada „iznutra“ i nedoumice koje su proizašle iz ideje značenja doma s jedne strane i istovremenog odlaska, putovanja i života negdje drugdje s druge strane. Tu novu sliku grada „iznutra“ u crtežima Mrtva priroda dovodim u relaciju s mojim doživljajem doma i životom koji se odvija kroz suživot s dvoje male djece.

Naš dom pretrpan je dječjim potrepštinama i igračkama koje su posvuda. Igračke su u našem stanu svojevrsni označitelji našeg doma. Kroz dječju interakciju igračke kao označitelji poprimaju značenje, potiču maštu, kreativnost, vode nas u neke druge zamišljene svjetove, međutim bez ljudske interakcije one su neobnovljiva mrtva priroda koja nestaje.

Rad Mrtva priroda sastoji se od tri crtačke tonske studije u olovci dimenzija 150 x 150 cm. Na pojedinim crtežima pojedinačno su prikazani motivi igračaka (drvena kućica za lutke, drvene tračnice, papirnati avion). Ti motivi igračaka odabrani su budući da promišljaju igru putovanja, a njihov prikaz u prirodnoj veličini unutar predimenzioniranog kadra sugerira prazninu i napuštenost. Motivi na ovim crtežima prikazani su iz gornjeg rakursa i u galeriji se izlažu oslonjeni na pod i o zid čime provociraju značenja dislokacije, i perifernu relaciju naspram uobičajene pozicije promatranja.

Ines Matijević Cakić

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The drawing Portrait with Hair originates from the merge of my art practice with living experience of motherhood. I am observing motherhood through meeting the Other, which brings me the possibility of transformative of my personal, as well as artistic identity.

Portrait with Hair is a kind of a memorabilia on a significant event in my life, the first haircut of Nola, my seven year old daughter. This work is a visual subjectivization of an experience which has emerged from the research of intersubjectivity, both Nola’s and mine, our togetherness, communication, process of identification, recognition and acceptance.

From the position of a mother, I am involved in research and questioning of culture based stereotypes associated with perception of hair as an attribute of femininity, beauty and gender identity. Through the research presented in this work, I am attempting to separate the imposed stereotypes from my own perception of a female being, just like my daughter is trying to do, but they keep coming back to us with every new attempt.

The work Portrait with Hair is presented through both image and text. The visual part of this work is expressed through the motif of my daughter’s portrait which I sketched in the hairdresser’s salon while waiting for her first haircut. The same portrait is then interpreted through linear sketch on a canvas. The lines in this drawing are woven from Nola’s discarded, cut off pieces of hair. Through this act, this work shows the qualities of duality, of making distance and drawing near at the same time. Textual part of this paper is interpreted through the technique of digital print. The content of this text expresses my brief diary notes in which I write down the complex acceptance processes of the Other, the questioning of my own expectations and culturally reinforced ideals.

Ines Matijević Cakić

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Ines Matijević Cakić: Matrixial Narratives

Matrixial narratives are a study of one’s own pregnancy in nine tonal drawings that outline the preoccupations of the artist, exploration of women’s writing/language in art and its position. On the other hand, the context in which the works are created shifts the focus from the theoretical and research to personal, to first person.

Post-Lacanian theoretical literature of Luce Irigaray, from the French feminist circle around Julia Kristeva, who introduced the female body into the existing social system of art, had a great influence on the liberation of female speech and the emergence of a new discourse. Through Matrixial narratives, by opening of the artist towards her own body conditions and self-analysis, the female body and condition become a speaking subject. A subject that recognizes the language can also speak, and it must
speak because it is the only way it can last.

The post-feminist theorist Julia Kristeva believes that the language produces the world, pronounces and reproduces it, creating a symbolic membrane within which the subject recognizes itself in the language and has to reproduce that system in the process of becoming independent so that it would not return to the space of the pre-subject. The language, including the subject, is not neutral even in this work where the woman’s position is clear.

In the focus of nine narratives (nine months of pregnancy) the artist sets her own naked female body, her undisguised feelings, thoughts, intimacy, love and concerns. She is entirely within the circle, she has her own place in the system of the language that she created herself and in which she speaks from the position of a Subject. Naturally, even more than that, outside of it, her jouissance speaks to others as well “Write yourself! Your body needs to be heard” (Cixous). It raises the question of why
it needs to be heard, and the answer is not because of the breaking of boundaries of a primary male language system, social transgression is not the motive. The language spoken by the artist is the way to overcome her own conditions, the matrix through which she is free to speak the truth. The way she lets it out of herself is the speech covered by theoretical discourse, contemplation of her own condition, writing of diary entries, concentration, self-questioning and meticulous artistic work that gives her the pleasure to speak.

The intersubjectivity and context of pregnancy sets the author in the position for artistic research and action. Gravidity becomes a potential for creative speech in the first person. That way the work focused on her condition becomes a way of selfliberation and is very therapeutic. Applied skills are an excellent blend resulting in nine self-images in nine different phases which, like a mirror, reflect the conditions that the artist is going through during pregnancy. The artist establishes a discourse with herself and by trying to find a space for herself establishes a relationship with her child, that is, towards the child.
The author’s speech is complex, it contains readable and hard-to-understand places, symbols and elements from her real environment that constitute a collage of emotions, conditions and words which describe it; the drawings are separate entities, each of which represent one month.

Fictional and real, nature and artefacts, private and public, present and absent, discipline and chaos are dichotomies which make up each of these entities. Multiple layers of language, interpretation, meaning and possibilities are ways in which the artist discovers the Barthes pleasure in language.

The author’s signature is recognizable in lines, motif; although complex, it is smooth, understandable, readable, but the tone the author is giving to the drawing is serious, heavy. The emphasis shifts from the description of the condition to the emotion that the tonal drawing inevitably leaves. Like pages of a diary that fade, a slightly melancholic patina covers the months of pregnancy. The whole process and efforts are shrouded in some times gone by. All the effort to awake the condition, to record and archive, gives us a graphic document about evanescence, growth and change. But, the changes the author is experiencing in relation to her body and conditions become the generators of new art practice that she directed towards herself, inwards, towards the subjective experience. Thus, this women’s writing repeats the idea that the body is a language.

The artist Mary Kelly in her famous work Post-Partum Document deals with continuous monitoring of her own conditions through the collection and recording of the child’s condition, obtained by measuring and studying. Keeping a diary and using text to articulate the personal is characteristic of Ines Matijević Cakić as well, but her materials do not consist of external objects as an instrument for creating new artistic content, but of the reflection of the inner world, recycling the subjective, imaginary, consciously and unconsciously collected materials, items for the construction of a new system of representation. In her work the influence of Lacan’s psychoanalysis and his concept of the “mirror stage” are shifted from the material external artefacts from the mother’s seven-year-old archive (Kelly diapers, anal prints, baby undershirts, doodles) to the intersubjective archive. Regardless of the materials artists use, the result is highlighting the role of a woman as an artist and mother. Pregnancy and motherhood and that certain something (“She is not entirely here. She is quite here. But there is something more,” Lacan, 1999) through the work of Ines Matijević are a contribution to the evaluation (of the art) of motherhood, which is so necessary in the very moments while it lasts; keeping attention, focus and the mirror are the ways in which the artist contributes to the strengthening of the system of values, while putting herself in a critical position. Each drawing constitutes a separate thematic unit: anticipation, disruption, love, identity, control, identification, separation, among which Shape and Name are the more material external witnesses of changes which are alternating in the artist’s consciousness, whereas the sewing machine in the process of identification becomes the “machine for living”.

Just how much the unaware and symbolic language is familiar to the author can be seen in the graphic stylization and motifs, for example the dresses as a form of citation mother – daughter. Resemblance to our mothers that we drag through life can make us angry, but we rejoice when we find it in our daughters. The matrix by which our body or face is shaped, that we recognize in the motions, tone of voice, gestures, is more evident to others.
Without big words, in Matrixial narratives the artist takes stock of a specific period of her life, finds her own framework and place within the image.

A short introduction to the Matrixial narratives

or nine images in one drawing of Ines Matijević Cakić

The artist is certainly no longer that mythical being, alone with his work, giving each other and knowing their own meaning, self-sufficient in its self-intelligibility. It can be said that the position is completely opposite. Thus, the artist is in some sort of centre, in an environment made up of concentric circles of thick layers of different influences, pressures, challenges of aesthetic and theoretical but also ethical nature, what the art theories about the artist and his work as autonomous beings once called secondary influences. Against that environment, simply called social, the artist cannot, and in many ways does not want to fight because for a long time he has considered that fight to be a social, even subjective, utopia. Illusions about his own subversive powers have long been lost; moreover, precisely these circumstances are the ones that affect the artist with an arsenal of multitude of his own diversionary tactics and strategies.

But if these social circumstances really are seemingly or actually impenetrable and unbreakable, then where can the artist seek and find areas of his freedoms, and not only for himself, but also for us, the others?

Many solutions are possible. For example, and not accidentally this one, seemingly impossible and contradictory to the essence of things – namely that in the space of many ideas of untouchable social conventions that make him their prisoner and hostage he finds a place where the link of that chain is the strongest and with the strength and power of his own work he turns it into his own gain and benefit of his freedom. And this can only be done if and when all of your life and artistic potentials are serving a purpose of self-preservation as an existential and self-creation as an aesthetical, but also ethical category.

Carefully shaping his artistic world deeply immersed in the nature of himself as a man, in the nature of his own being liberated from the burden of great ideas and ideologies, therefore free in the world but free from that world as well, the world of tyranny of free choice in which, by the way, almost everything is forbidden, the artist turns to himself and his deepest intimacies.
For female artists, hence already self-determined and named according to gender/sex, these intimacies are precisely that, gender and sex.

Ines Matijević Cakić belongs to that art, or she is the artist of that art, or of the world of that art, and therefore uniqueness in general and in it uniqueness of individual.

Therefore, if it is about an artist who seeks and discovers her own subject of sex or gender in the shackles and chains of her captivity in a world of socially ossified conventions, including those feminist attitudes, and in that seeks her own artistic practice as a logical direction, it should be noted that Ines Matijević Cakić is not that artist. For her, that direction would be the line of least resistance, easy and thin. She does not break conventions on the principle of provocation, destruction and diversion, with both her work and attitude, but takes the much harder and complicated road, the road that considers itself as a thought, idea and theory of context, but also her own artistic practice that gives these ideas, attitudes, actions and behaviour artistic form.

Or, as she wrote in her diary notes or texts that should be read like a diary, “Exploration of my own subjectivity through drawing and the creative process of designing this work have contributed to the understanding of many questions that have arisen to me as a mother of a two-year-old girl, a pregnant woman and an artist, relating to complex maternal feelings, sensibilities, love, anxiety, emotions, fear, control, and questions about my own artistic identity. Through Matrixial narratives I strived to comprehensively accept sentimental feelings and multiplied mood extremes by separating myself from the presumption that subjectivity and motherhood in contemporary art are shameful.”
Ines Matijević Cakić openly and frankly “separates” herself from the givens of assumptions of bigoted forms of traditional social conventions and their ultimate will, but even more than that, she also separates herself from the settings of radical forms of feminist will that she certainly knows and to which she is almost inclined, enjoying the benefits of the width with which these findings open the horizons of possible and desired freedom, but still not so much that she would be a slave to them or, more precisely, uncritically serve them. From this theoretical world she takes only as much as she needs to gain mental, intellectual and emotional benefits.

And to me it seems that these are the frameworks and dimensions of social context that this artist more or less willingly accepts as much as she rejects them. This opens and closes one world, the rational and intellectual one, not without emotional dimensions of course, and opens another one, or one more in One, the artistic world of Ines Matijević Cakić.

It is the world that the artist shapes and creates as “her” artistic world, a world that is formed by thinking, where this thinking is deeply immersed into emotions. It is not just a journey through the blessings of Arcadian maternal sensitivity; it is rather a journey through the Scylla and Charybdis of multiform and very contradictory feelings which include the world of Ines Matijević Cakić to whom, “a mother of a two-year-old girl, a pregnant woman and an artist, / many questions / have arisen relating to complex maternal feelings, sensibilities, love, anxiety, emotions, fear, control, and questions about her own artistic identity.”

Drawing as thinking – “I draw by thinking or vice versa, I think by drawing,” as the artist would say – we recognize in all forms of her exhibition practice, or her professional career, even when it is just one drawing among many others and of different authors, a drawing in the physical environment of a gallery, a drawing in various media solutions. Therefore, in all the exhibitions, in the sense that “artists present themselves and not their drawings”, Ines Matijević Cakić is impeccably consistent, unques-tionably underlining her aesthetic and ethical principles. One might wonder whether this is just pretentious moralizing. It is, but these criteria and categories were established by the artist herself, that is why we are checking them. Not because we are suspicious, but because we are trying to understand this art. Finally, by writing the catalogue data for instance, I realized that the biographical info is more than a résumé; it is a whole in which birth, education, work experience, individual and collective exhibitions as artistic experience are at the same level, one and indivisible.

Just as an example, drawings in collective exhibitions (Biennial), an individual exhibition in Waldinger, the previous one in Pula and finally this one ahead of us are the best examples of how precise this artist is when it comes to her every public presentation.

Again, perhaps presumptuous, it seems to me that as much as each of the previous exhibitions was precise, thorough, thoughtful, and finally realized as a specific art practice in each media solution, this cycle titled Matrixial narratives seems to be probably the most comprehensive and most complete artistic project that this artist embarked on. Even if we leave aside the fact that it is part of her doctoral thesis, which means that a lot of scientific methodologies were invested in the project, the concept of the exhibition is crystal clear in its artistic purity and independence. If we take only a small and entirely indiscreet peek into the titles of chapters in which she was preparing the final and executive solutions of her practice, like Personal understanding of the subjectivity of motherhood in the encounter with art practice, The review of works ‘Untitled – a work dedicated to Nola’ and ‘Imaginary bestiary’, According to ‘Matrixial narratives, Mother’s opinion and her body, Artistic conception, Drawings interpretation and then the names of nine drawings of equal size from this exhibition, roundels of 140 cm in diameter, in pencil drawing technique on white surface titled 1. Anticipation, 2. Disruption, 3. Identity, 4. Control, 5. Love, 6. Identification, 7. Shape, 8. Name and 9. Separation, it is clear just how complex and demanding the project that the artist embarked on is. It makes sense to once again refer to the artist’s own words so that her thoughts, in words as well as in drawings, would prove their indisputable clarity: “Through the works Untitled – a work dedicated to Nola, Imaginary bestiary and Matrixial narratives I overcame the presence of a sense of shame to subjectively depict through my own work the personal experience through the prism of an artist – observer, in the encounter with motherhood and pregnancy it encouraged me to reflect on the process of my own transformation through pregnancy and motherhood, and thus the possibilities of transforming my art practice that was opened to the exploration of the subjective experience of motherhood that I expressed in Matrixial narratives. This drawing polyptych is expressed in the form of a graphic novella that builds its narrative through the collection and interpretation of contents resulting from the synergy of study of psychoanalysis, diary entries and visual comments through a series of figurative drawings.”

In that world, the world as a space where sex/gender feminist theories as well as the experience of other art practices are well known, she seeks and finds a place for her artistic being and likewise her living being, a woman. Common to both paths and goals is the experience, acquired by knowledge, but even more so the one acquired in life and art. And that is the path when thinking by drawing, as well as thinking by writing, is realized as a work that we see, watch, contemplate, interpret, and in fact it is a process in us who are looking identical to the one that the artist is going through, in one and all nine drawings. Medium rather than the technique of drawing and thread, that these drawings have also gone through, are as much a metaphor as they are a reality of the actual art practice, Hegelian thoughts about the “silent weaving of the spirit” that shapes the entirety of civilization, but in the art practice of Ines Matijević Cakić it is primarily the silent weaving by which she builds the entirety of her own being.

Vlastimir Kusik

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Ines Matijević Cakić

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Ciklus Imaginarni bestijarij potaknut je komunikacijom i dijalogom s kćeri Nolom. Taj je rad vizualna interpretacija nastala kao rezultat istraživanja Noline svijest o sebi, njezina kognitivnog razvoja, razvoja percepcije, opažanja i njezine spoznaje. U svakodnevnim dijalozima Nola mi je često postavljala pitanja koja su i meni kao majci predstavljala izazov, poticala me na preispitivanje, kako djetetu objasniti i približiti svijet i okruženje o kojem i sama moram promisliti. Istraživanje sam započela u razdoblju Noline razvojne faze koju je francuski filozof Jacques Lacan u znanom eseju Stadij zrcala (1949) nazvao imaginarnom. Imaginarno prema Lacanu proizlazi iz prostora ogledanja, „zrcalnih slika“; u imaginarnom se grade svjesne i nesvjesne slike o sebi koje su, uglavnom, temeljene na vizualnoj percepciji. Potaknuta značenjem koje podrazumijeva razvoj percepcije, u ovom ciklusu radova istražujem granice između vidljivog, stvarnosti, pretpostavki i zamišljanja. Od niza fotografija koje su nastale kao rezultat bilježenja ovoga procesa za ciklus Imaginarni bestijarij i daljnju manipulaciju odabrala sam deset koje su za mene po svojoj strukturi predstavljale nedefiniranu znakovitost i poseban poticaj na kreativno promišljanje. Fotografije su zabilježene za vrijeme Nolinih i mojih razgovora; bilješke su proizišle iz njezina poticaja, kroz reakciju na njoj nepoznato i nelogično, a nazivi fotografija izravno iz njezinih pitanja: Gdje je dinosaur?, Gdje je tijelo jelena?, Gdje je namještaj?, Gdje je namještaj? II, Gdje je namještaj? III, Gdje je filodendron?, Gdje su šumske životinje?, Gdje su ptice koje lete prema nebu? I, Gdje su ptice koje lete prema nebu? II, Gdje su ptice koje lete prema nebu? III. Ti razgovori i jednostavna dječja pitanja potaknuli su me na promišljanje o situacijama i procesima čije se značenje podrazumijevalo, a zapravo ne znam jednostavne odgovore primjerene za razumijevanje dvogodišnjega djeteta. Kao mogućnost komunikacije i odgovore na njezina pitanja Noli sam ponudila odgovor u vizualnom obliku kroz isprekidane iscrtane obrise predmeta koje sam koncem aplicirala na prethodno digitalno otisnutu fotografiju na platnu. Te konture oblika naznačene su kao jedan od mogućih odgovora, otvorene su za unošenje dodatnih značenja i zamišljanja. Za te grafike moglo bi se reći da su vizualna interpretacija sinergije oblika proizišlih iz Nolinih opažanja i zapitkivanja i mojih vizualnih odgovora ponuđenih kroz konture imaginarnih oblika.

Ines Matijević Cakić

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My artistic activity has always been preoccupied with something one could define as a series of questions, such as What is a woman? Who creates definitions, places and relationships in society? Where does the line between biological and cultural construction of gender lies in the contemporary society? In what way are relationships between woman and man articulated? I am interested in transposing various/different historical models, myths and Biblical stories and forms from one context into another by choosing a sample/example and subjecting it to transformation, reinterpretation, which, directed through various means, can be transferred into another context

I try to change the context of stories which originated in Homer’s Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphosis or the Bible and put them in relation to the contemporary time by playing subtly with meanings. I invest interpretations of the written word with my own impressions and experiences and combine them with general norms. In my works ancient gods are depicted through contemporary prototypes, and dramatic events are reduced to a narrative genre scene which often implies a certain historical scene of the same subject by a specific iconographic sign. I tend to choose those stories which are close to my own preoccupations related to the depiction of women throughout history, such as goddess Venus (Mars and Venus), saints like Suzanne (Suzanne and the Elders) or the seamstress who waits the return of her husband from war (Penelope). Depending on the concept of an art work, I represent my own interpretations in figurative form, experimenting in the process with photography, computer graphics and drawing or combinations of them.
I most frequently use photography in order to obtain constituent elements of the composition which almost always form a sketch like grid upon which I develop my ideas, and vice versa.

The drawing Mars and Venus is an interpretation of the ancient Roman myth of the same title which has throughout history been used in defining relationships between two sexes. The mythic story puts forward an act of adultery committed by the goddess of love, beauty, fertility and sexuality, Venus, and the god of war, Mars.

In my interpretation of the myth I was inspired by Tinotetto’s humorous depiction of Mars and Venus showing the moment just before, Venus’ husband Vulcan discovers Mars hidden under the table and stared at by a dog.

My interpretation of the story is similar to Tintoretto’s. Situated in a forestial environment two human figures and a dog form a diagonal composition, the centre of which is taken by the dog. Standing under the tree and staring directly at the viewer the dog opens the composition and incorporates viewers in the symbolical story making them chief culprits of the infidelity. To the right side of the dog, shows Vulcan and remorseful Venus converse in a resigned manner.

Analytical form of the drawing was created according to different planes. Realism of the foreground gradually wanes nearly to abstraction towards the background.

Ines Matijević Cakić

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Priča o Bambiju interpretirana je kroz figurativni crtež, svojevrsni autoportret. Na platnu, ovdje u funkciji crtačke podloge, linearnim crtežom izraženim kroz šivani trag konca, prikazana je žena (autoportret) koja nježno dotiče malo lane. Žena i lane prikazani su u nedefiniranom interijeru koji je popločen gotovo nevidljivim ornamentom bijelih ruža po zidnim oblogama (Slika 56). Ukupno 365 ruža sustavno je šivano godinu dana, svaka ruža ekvivalent je pojedinom danu te simbolizira nevidljivi majčin rad, majčinsku praksu i emocionalni angažman koji majka svakodnevno, odnosno kroz prvu godinu djetetova života, uputi djetetu i koji se od nje očekuje.

Ines Matijević Cakić

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Ø100cm x 4 kom

 2007. – 2009.

U radu istražujem prostor kroz pogled i evidentiranje prostora iz različitih točki gledišta. Preispitujem mogućnosti preklapanja fotografskog mapiranja prostora I ideju vizualnog sažimanja slike u jedan kadar.

Anamorfoza „… je iznad svega preobličavanje oblika zaposjednuto projekcijom formi izvan njih samih, preoblikovanje nastalo krivljanjem koje sliku uobličava tako da može biti gledana s različitih točki gledanja, koje sliku preouobličava u njenu „drugu suštinu“ koja je istovremeno i pojavni oblik privida njene suštine, u zavisnosti od mjesta s kojeg se promatra.“ Branka Arsić (Pogled i subjektivnost, Beograd, 2000.)

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