Tina Dobrajc - Balkan Promises

Artist Tina Dobrajc is returning to Y Gallery with a new exhibition, where her large-scale, mystical and always impressive paintings continue to be very popular. Thanks to her thoughtful use of rich animal iconography, numerous folkloric emblems, and sophisticated feminism, her works are sometimes startling and, above all, quickly recognizable. Kurent, accordion players, Drežnica carnival masks and naked girls with mobcaps are motifs that work perfectly in a scenographically elaborated and balanced forest landscape, getting under the viewer's skin with a touch of imaginative pop culture references.

At the beginning of 2022 we admired the fresh production of paintings in the gallery Miklova hiša in Ribnica. This selection of works is now joined by the latest work Balkan Promises (Border Control), the content of which is the starting point for the title and concept of the entire exhibition entitled Balkan Promises. The exhibition includes individual works in which we see groups of united, active, rebellious figures. They are pulled from the foreground into the embrace of colourful nature, where, as usual, they join their animal companions. The author's favourite forest is brought to the foreground, where we notice recurring elements of smoke, fire, and aggressive fluorescent colours that enhance the apocalyptic atmosphere and emphasize the distress and gloom of the destroyed environment.

In addition to environmental observation, the works also raise a more complex geopolitical issue, namely the increasing and recurring xenophobic tendencies in our environment. Combined with excessive nationalism, these are too often conditioned and justified at the expense of perverted traditions and heritage. For their awkward struggle with the foreign and the undesirable, some use the figure of woman as the bearer of appropriate values and morals. The woman is exploited to illustrate the allegory of happiness, peace, culture and other virtues that require the eradication of the other and the foreign; that a clear boundary must be drawn between us and them.

The angry protagonists in the author's paintings are seen from a distance and often across the river, which in the Slovenian national topos is often a symbol of a delicate national border. The women wear masks, wave burning Molotov cocktails, dance and play musical instruments. With the forest as a dark backdrop, they vehemently defy the traditional notion of women's helplessness and powerlessness. Tina Dobrajc thus makes a specific socio-political statement by shamelessly depicting chaos and the generally felt lack of empathy; there is an atmosphere of discontent and rebellion. This is reinforced by the body space and the viewer's gaze across the river, where it is no longer entirely clear who is crossing where and what awaits them on the other side - or what they have been promised there.