BREATHING PATTERNS

Breathing Patterns are hand-embroidered wall works and accompanying scent compositions that explore geometry as a living, embodied system. Created through slow, repetitive hand needlework, the embroidered forms draw on geometric patterning as a language of structure, care, and endurance. Each stitch accumulates time, marking the quiet labor of the hand while transforming rigid systems into intimate, tactile surfaces.

The geometric patterns suggest order and repetition, yet they are never mechanical. Slight irregularities—inevitable in handwork—introduce breath, vulnerability, and presence. These deviations become central to the work, emphasizing the body behind the pattern and the feminist lineage of needlework as both domestic labor and creative resistance.

Scent functions as an invisible counterpart to the stitch. Developed in dialogue with the embroidered forms, the fragrances move through space as thread moves through cloth—activating memory, emotion, and physical awareness. Rather than illustrating the visual works, scent extends them, allowing the patterns to be felt as atmosphere and duration.

Together, embroidery and fragrance invite a slower mode of attention. Breathing Patterns proposes making and sensing as acts of care, where repetition becomes meditative and geometry becomes intimate—measured not only by the eye, but by the body in time and breath.

FANTOME SAUVAGE

In my recent work, Fantôme Sauvage, the mask emerges not as a tool of disguise, but as a method for reconfiguring the body. It interrupts the primacy of the face—the site through which identity is most readily assigned—and instead renders the body as surface: textured, extended, and perceptually unstable.

This gesture draws on earlier avant-garde strategies, from the anonymity cultivated by Maison Margiela to the performative transformations of Leigh Bowery, where the face was not hidden but rewritten. In my work, however, the mask operates within a contemporary condition shaped by digital multiplicity, surveillance, and the dispersal of the self across images, memories, and projections.

To obscure the face is to redirect attention. In Fantôme Sauvage, vision is unsettled, and other senses begin to surface—touch, scent, proximity. The body resists immediate recognition; it must be encountered through duration and sensation. The figure becomes something felt rather than known.

Here, the mask functions as an interface rather than a barrier. It mediates between interior and exterior, human and animal, presence and absence. The chimera-like bodies that emerge in these images suggest not a fixed identity, but one in constant mutation—shifting between states, refusing stability.

I understand these masked forms not as concealment, but as a continuous act of becoming. Identity is not revealed; it is composed—layered through material, gesture, and atmosphere. What cannot be seen insists on being sensed.

SCENTS OF NON-EXISTENT COUNTRIES

Scents of Non-Existent Countries explores the ephemeral nature of memory, identity, and place through the olfactory essence of the former Yugoslavia. Presented in test tubes, each scent evokes a different period in the region’s complex history, from its royal beginnings to the socialist era and eventual dissolution. These aromas—earthy, floral, industrial, and nostalgic—represent fragments of nations that no longer exist, yet live on in the collective memory of those who experienced them. By engaging the sense of smell, the piece invites viewers to reconnect with the intangible, reminding us how deeply scent is tied to personal and cultural identity.

LIKE A BEE

In Balkan folklore, bees are revered for their sacred role in nature and their connection to agriculture, fertility, and the spiritual world. They are seen as divine creatures, believed to carry prayers to God and symbolize community, productivity, and the cycle of life. Honey is considered a precious gift with healing properties, often used in rituals to honor ancestors and maintain harmony between the living and the dead. Bees also exhibit remarkable intelligence, using complex communication like the waggle dance, solving problems, and demonstrating collective decision-making and numerical abilities, making them central to both folklore and science.

FIELD WORK

In January 2024, French farmers engaged in protests which blocked roads to Paris, Toulouse and other urban centers with tractors and hay bales. Small acts of resistance could be seen in the meticulous removal and upside down reinstallation of village road signs. The locals, in solidarity with the farmer’s unions, made no attempt to restore the signage. The protestors demands focused on the rise of production costs, the influx of cheap products from neighboring countries and the ongoing challenges to agriculture as a result of climate change. From my production studio in Limoux, a rural town in the Southwest, I began considering the role that farms and agricultural workers have played in our understanding of rural spaces as well as urban spaces. The resulting series, entitled Field Work, uses the traditional medium of hand needlework to capture images of changing seasons, crop rotations and the difficult yet life-sustaining work of our agricultural neighbors. Portions of this project will be on view at Artifact Projects, New York in 2025.

PRIVATE diaspora

Private Diaspora explores the intricate layers of personal and cultural identity through the lens of my journey as an immigrant from Belgrade, Serbia, born in 1959, at a time when Yugoslavia was a beacon of unity amid diverse cultures. My art delves into the nuances of nostalgia and displacement, weaving together threads of memory, scent, and tactile experiences evocative of my family's heritage in needlework and craft. By juxtaposing fragrances reminiscent of my childhood home with conceptual installations that reflect on the fragmentation of cultural landscapes, this exhibition invites viewers to contemplate the evolving tapestry of identity in the wake of geopolitical shifts, illustrating how personal histories intertwine with broader narratives of diaspora and belonging. Portions of this project were exhibited in 2023 at Pleiades Gallery, New York and will be on view at Viridian Artists, New York in 2025.

ADMIRING GLANCES

This series of five silkscreen monotypes mines press imagery of Richard and Pat Nixon’s state visit to Yugoslavia in September of 1970. This was the first visit of a sitting US President to Yugoslavia. The focus of the series is the documented interactions between first ladies Pat Nixon and Jovanka Broz. The original press photos published in Yugoslav newspapers focused on the “admiring glances” exchanged between the women. Portions of this project will be on view at Viridian Artists, New York in 2025.

ALIEN PROPERTY

Alien Property is a text and image project that focuses on the FBI files of Nikola Tesla’s work. Journalist John J O’Neill wrote in his 1944 book Prodigal Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla, that the FBI confiscated a safe and appropriated property that belong to Tesla following his death at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan. The whereabouts of these materials are obscure and something that the FBI denied having to anyone who contacted them for access to the archive. These letters of inquiry along with the FBI replies, form a kind of call and response that forms the backbone of this project.

BALKANALIA

This one-evening event was partnered with a screening of the film Trieste, Yugoslavia and food from the Balkans. As a public performance, the participants are asked to make a gastronomic bridge between the no-longer-existent Yugoslavia and its remaining culinary reminders.SPEISEKINO // FOOD AND FOOTAGE is part of Shared Cities: Creative Momentum and co-funded by the European Union's Creative Europe Program and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Premiere: October 17, 2019. ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik. Siemensstrasse 27 10551 Berlin.

HEALING AGENT

My great-grandmother Marija Stepanovic was a healer. She raised her family in a village outside of Novi Sad, Serbia. From her home, she practiced medicinal cures for a variety of ailments from rheumatism, insomnia, skin wounds, and gastrointestinal diseases. Her primary healing materials, all locally grown and produced, were honey, chamomile and Melissa officinalis – lemon balm. She kept particular varieties, known for their potency in copper containers which themselves were thought to support general wellbeing. This olfactory portrait of Marija, stored in a copper flask, holds a combination of Melissa, chamomile and honey fragrance notes which when sprayed provide a comforting sweet and citrus healing agent. Healing Agent, 2022 was included in Portraits in Scent, a group exhibition at Olfactory Art Keller in New York.

THE TYPEWRITER‍ ‍

In April of 1941, Adolf Hitler pronounced that Yugoslavia is to “be considered as a foe and therefore must be destroyed as quickly as possible.” Following his directives, Operation Retribution/ Punishment was launched on April 6, 1941. Over the course of less than two weeks, Belgrade was attacked with over 300 tons of bombs killing approximately 4,000 civilians. The bombings caused massive damage to the water and electrical infrastructure and destroyed about half of the residential structures. The National Library of Serbia was levelled by bombs that set off a massive inferno which destroyed books, documents, photographs, films and ancient manuscripts – the history of the people. The Belgrade Zoo was bombed releasing terrified wild animals into the city to fend for themselves. Reigning King Peter fled to the mountains to save himself and his family. By April 18th, Belgrade was fully occupied with the capture of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war. Even during this tremendously chaotic time period, store owners were legally required to keep their businesses open – even for a few hours a day. This enforced semblance of normality was the prompt for The Typewriter – a fictional story based upon a factual event.

TRAILING BELGRADE

Trailing Belgrade is an olfactory/video installation that taps into the epigenetic smells of Belgrade – a process of conscious and unconscious forgetting. During the course of the Ständige Vertretung intervention, the space is demarcated by a series of glass globes that emit the scents of concrete, leather, tobacco, coffee and baked goods. The looped video captures curators, critics and visitors at the Museum of Contemporary Art Salon in Belgrade describing the smells of their city. Premiere: October 17, 2019. ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik. Siemensstrasse 27 10551 Berlin.

THE BEAUTIFUL ONE

The Beautiful One is an immersive installation that encapsulates the life of a once-renowned singer from Yugoslavia, now living in quiet anonymity in Florida. Through the use of sound and scent, the piece recreates the intimate world of her apartment, which has become both a sanctuary and a cage. The soft echoes of her past performances mingle with the everyday sounds of her current life, while subtle fragrances evoke the nostalgia of her homeland, now distant and fragmented. This work reflects on the emotional complexity of displacement and fame lost to time, transforming the domestic space into a microcosm of memory, longing, and identity.

RED LEATHER

Red Leather is a play based on the smells of her childhood in 1960s Belgrade. In a darkened room, audience members experience the live mixing of scents layered upon a pre-recorded monologue. The Red Leather musical score is Ljubica Maric’ A Song of Space: A Cantata for Mixed Choir and Orchestra (1956), Belgrade Radio- Television Choir and Symphonic Orchestra conducted by Mladen Jagust. Maric was born in Kragujevac, Serbia in 1909 and educated in Prague. As a follower of Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal, polyphonic style, her practice grew until she became the most prominent female composer, conductor and music teacher in Serbia. After a period of self-imposed silence in the 1940s, she regained her musical interests in ancient sounds influenced by medieval chants and texts on tombstones. This cantata is the culmination of exploration into these epigenetic, ancestral voices. Constructed as a series of eight epithets with a prelude, the piece focuses on the universal theme of life, death and space. Premiere: October 17, 2019. ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik. Siemensstrasse 27 10551 Berlin.

DWINDLING TRIBE

Dwindling Tribe is a meditation on the enduring yet often overlooked legacies of women's traditional crafts. The piece features a Serbian ethnic doll, handmade and steeped in the cultural history of textile work and adornment, a craft passed down through generations of women. The doll is immersed in camomile-scented wax, which solidifies to create a translucent, ghostly figure. This waxy layer obscures yet preserves the delicate details of the doll, evoking the idea of memory—fragile but preserved, hidden in plain sight. Housed in a carved wood box, the doll becomes an artifact of both personal and collective history, confined yet cherished, its form a silent testament to the labor and skill of women’s hands. The camomile scent, traditionally associated with healing and calm, brings a sensory layer that connects the past to the present, reminding us of the intimate, tactile nature of these creations. This work serves as a quiet homage to the often invisible labor of women and the rich, tactile language of their handiwork.

FRAMEWORK

This series, inspired by the Yugoslav K^7 kiosks, reimagines these modular architectural forms through the meticulous, labor-intensive medium of hand embroidery. Designed by Slovenian architect Saša Mächtig in 1966, the K67 kiosks were innovative structures that functioned as liminal spaces—sites of commerce, communication, and social exchange in the urban landscape. Their mass-produced, utilitarian form contrasts with the intricate, personal nature of embroidery, creating a dialogue between industrial design and traditional craft. Through embroidery, I aim to bridge these disparate worlds. The kiosks, symbols of modernity and social connection, are reinterpreted through the slow, deliberate process of needlework. Each stitch becomes a meditative act, connecting past to present, mechanized production to handmade artistry. The result is a fusion of architectural precision and the tactile intimacy of fabric, reflecting on how structures—whether physical or crafted—shape the spaces we inhabit and the interactions we have within them. These works explore how public and private worlds intersect, much like the kiosks themselves once did. They serve as points of convergence, where mass production and personal labor meet, transforming ordinary architectural forms into expressions of time, care, and cultural memory.