Tanja Softic: Migrant Universe

On view August 20 through October 6, 2014, in the Harnett Museum of Art, is the exhibition Tanja Softić: Migrant Universe. Softić’s prints, drawings, and paintings combine images of natural and man-made structures with drawings based on appropriated visual material: medical and botanical illustrations, maps and charts, manuscript illuminations, and comic art. Her work addresses concepts of cultural hybridity, chaos, and memory. Her series, Migrant Universe, created from 2007 to 2011, consists of ten large mixed media works and is a “visual poem” about identity and the worldview of the immigrant.

In regards to her work, Softić states, “The visual vocabulary of the Migrant Universe drawings suggests a displaced existence: fragmented memories, adaptation, revival, and transformation. Because I do not live and work within the comfort or boundaries of the culture in which I first learned to observe, interpret, and engage the world, I have the arguable privilege of having lived more than one life. My memory is my virtual self and, paradoxically, my most authentic self. Yet, memory is a process that involves erosions and accretions that occur with any reconstructive, interpretative, or artistic act. One reconnects with what has been broken, fragmented, or overlaid. Remembering becomes an act of reconstruction, where one works with what is there and tries to visualize what has been lost. Because each act of memorization necessarily involves interpretation, there can be no objective recollection.”