Biography of Assistant Professor Dragana Crnjak

Since I moved from Bosnia to the United States in 1997, displacement as both an act and a state of mind has been important part of my working processes.  The questions of location and placement have become harder to answer, suggesting an existence in between many worlds, cultures, and dialogs.   Thus for me, the process of drawing implies recording, diagramming my thinking and language in an attempt to understand the ubiquitous interweaving of past and present, memory and tangible reality.
           
I am drawn intuitively to the ideas of the uplifting but still fragile energy of a new beginning, a sense of levitation, the transitional moments of becoming and vanishing. The forms and shapes, resembling stones, sticks, bones and flies, imply transitional moments of growing and developmental processes. Resembling both monumental and microscopic visions, the suggested structures often struggle with their own stability -- it is unclear whether the structures are being built or destroyed.