2004-2024
In October 2024, the film “A Journey Through Anka’s Two-Decade Artistic Creation” was presented at the Cultural Center in Lazarevac, Belgrade, Serbia. Through the film screening, the audience had the opportunity to become acquainted with the artist’s extensive work, ideas, and thoughts that she grappled with over the years as she grew into an artistic persona.
From Exhibitor to Artist – The Author’s Words
Back in 2004, during an interview for my first solo exhibition, I was asked what I would like to be in life, referring to a profession. I said I wanted to graduate from the Academy of Arts and become an art culture teacher. That dream came true. I am now a professor teaching art culture.
And an artist? I understood that as an identity acquired at birth. Some call it talent, discipline, a gift from God, the product of work, or mere chance. How can I aspire to become an artist when I already am one? Although I prefer to speak about myself through my works rather than words, this anniversary provides an opportunity to narrate my artistic journey.
Artistic Critique:
The artistic preoccupations of Anka Stojanović are based on an eclectic approach to creation, one that, through the use of various stylistic and conceptual definitions of visual language, leads us through multiple reexaminations of form and the immediacy of visual storytelling. Drawing on religious art as a contemporary creative paradigm, Anka succeeds in transferring traditional elements of sacred art onto a plane of more individualized, sensual, and contemporary expression. She does not abandon associations with and symbolism of the sacred but cloaks the motif with a layer of the tangible, aiming to translate universal symbols into what is visible.
One of the most dominant aspects of her work is the use of the gilded surface technique. In rich, miniature formats, with the expressive qualities of this technique, Anka finds ways to innovate and present it in a way that moves beyond its conventional visual-linguistic mediation. Gradually, she distances herself from conventional patterns and approaches, repositioning them into new contexts where she discovers contemporary structural associations (metal threads and strings), finding their meaning and placement in media conventions of modern art.
Thus, gilded threads sometimes evolve into sculptures, miniature pieces, or paintings, revealing traces of associative abstraction. At other times, they take on monochromatic hues, where elements of space and figures appear almost as outlines, with a deliberate disregard for traditional representation. Her works often include materials like lace, which informally provide a picture, building an autonomous language within the composition. Other materials, like travel maps, serve as a foundation for defining a strict geometry that finds its path between the lines of flight maps and becomes part of a unified system.
This freedom in the treatment of traditional techniques and their experimental transformation leads the artist to the realm of reinterpreting the dialogue between the traditional and the modern within contemporary artistic practices. Undoubtedly, this relationship represents a key to understanding Anka’s creative work.
Aleksandra Tanić, art historian