Visiting artist exhibits 'Dwellings'

Bosnian refugee Dragana Crnjak, a visiting artist who is teaching drawing at U.Va. this year, has her works on paper in an exhibit, “Dwellings,” at the Art Department’s new Off Grounds Gallery at 300 West Main St.

A Bosnian refugee, Crnjak said the works in the exhibit reflect her quest to build a private space of belonging, such as the work shown at left, “Gathering.”

“Since I moved from Bosnia to the United States in 1997, displacement as both an act and state of mind has been an important part of my working process,” she wrote in her artist statement. “The work exists in between abstraction and representation, and the evocation of what is absent. 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. The intimacy of my work is challenged by feelings of uncertainty, playfulness and absurdity.”

In all of her work, she explores three elements — shape, color and line — and often incorporates recognizable stones, rocks and bones. She said that for her, the challenge is in the relationships between objects and capturing the moment of movement and transformation.
Crnjak’s work will be on display until Feb. 28.