Edina Seleskovic

Brooklyn, NY

Residency: January-February 2011

Project Description:

My time at Sculpture Space was one of personal and artistic growth. I decided to spend my two-month residency experimenting and developing a series of sculptures that are quite new and different in form and content from my body of work created thus far and yet still within the realm of exploring basic human emotion.

I intended to tell a primal and universal story of human condition in my own voice. A simple story of what happens when we try to hold on to things that enavidably cannot be contained. Like a small puddle of water, eventually it will all slip through our fingers no matter how tightly we press them against one another. Unavoidably each moment will turn from present to past, from past to memories, to feelings, to faded pieces of puzzle that make up who we are.

I used figures to narrate for me and for the first time I used faces which are usually hidden in my paintings and sculptures. I have relied on them to employ their gestures and connect with the viewer. These faces are those of my collaborators and close friends, those who have been a part of my most incredible memories. The casts were my tools and the steel wire – my material.

The wire is both gentle and rigid at the same time, of different patinas and gauges; it took me on a journey from abstract to figurative, from open to details, from chaos to form in a slow and meditative way. It allowed me to treat my sculptures as drawings in space. And now it mandates from the viewer to come close and investigate the detail: how the form emerges from the lines. The wire completely creates each piece, carries it through, and holds it together in its environment.

I made three pieces in this series none of which are named yet. It is my time at Sculpture Space that let me live and breathe with my work and I simply wish to continue that in my future art practice: to observe and to allow the work to communicate everything its needs to say. Until then these will remain Untitled.

About the Artist:

Edina Seleskovic was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When the destructive Bosnian War of the early nineties displaced Edina from her home and family, she turned to art for solace. Since then, she received a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, and her sculptures have been exhibited in galleries across the US and Europe. Her collaborative efforts with artists of many disciplines have resulted in founding of New York-based artist collective The Stoodio and fashion collaborative Anie Rexe. Edina’s public art works include a mural at the Bosnian Embassy in Washington, DC and a 30-foot sculpture at the AVAZ business center in Sarajevo. In 2007, Bosnia and Herzegovina issued a Special Edition Postage Stamp featuring Edina’s painting. Her life and art have been a subject of numerous magazine articles, radio and TV shows, and a Voice of America TV documentary titled “Edina’s Story.” She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.