»Systematic destruction of people, either due to their different view of life and religion or due to their racial or national origin, is unfortunately still a dreadful topical issue in today’s world. In Slađana Matić Trstenjak’s paintings, holocaust is symbolically manifested like soulless golem, threateningly rising like an enormous gloomy mountain at the background of a landscape with a contrasting carefree effect.«
Slađana Matić Trstenjak was born on 29 July 1985 in Doboj in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After graduating from the Secondary School for Applied Arts in Sarajevo, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Široki Brijeg of the University of Mostar. She graduated in 2010 and obtained the academic title master of fine arts. Despite her youth she has exhibited at numerous group and solo exhibitions in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria and Turkey and has been awarded several times for her work. She is among others a member of several professional associations, such as ULUBiH, DLUM, ZSDLU and HKDM, and is a painting mentor to the Milena Lah visual arts section of the Croatian Cultural Union in Maribor.
For her first solo presentation at Maribor Synagogue, the artist prepared a very new artistic cycle The sky is crying in which she devoted herself to the topic of holocaust that she linked to the war situation that she experienced in her early youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She addresses the audience with sophisticated artistic language and specific colours and invites the observers to a dialogue and consideration about reasonableness of war and human rights. The art critic Mario Berdič described her: »Due to her educational profile, unusual personal style and her ethnic origin, Slađana Matić Trstenjak, MA, represents a real rarity on the Maribor artistic scene, as well as on the wider Slovenian one. Certainly just because of the special occasions of the war in the former common republic due to national or religious reasons, the topic of holocaust is even closer to her and relates to her directly. Systematic destruction of people, either due to their different view of life and religion or due to their racial or national origin, is unfortunately still a dreadful topical issue in today’s world. In Slađana Matić Trstenjak’s paintings, holocaust is symbolically manifested like soulless golem, threateningly rising like an enormous gloomy mountain at the background of a landscape with a contrasting carefree effect.«
Krešimir Mahečić, the Minister Plenipotentiary of the Croatian embassy in Slovenia, spoke at the opening, while Mario Berdič presented the artist and her work. Dragice Vocal Group of the Coda Cultural Centre (art director Sonja Volarič, répétiteur Lea Gačnik) performed in the cultural programme.
The project was supported by Municipality of Maribor. The donor of the opening was Cvetličarna, Tryševa ulica 14, Maribor.
