Arnela Mahmutovic - Spellbound in my Heart's root (Oil and pastel on canvas, 34" x 46", 2019)
Analyzing my traditional upbringing as a first-generation Bosniak-American in Western society, I generate a platform for dialogue and contemplation around the experience of living between two cultures. I orient veiled figures in different environments to continually shift them from their origin, while alluding to the spiritual and psychological. The spaces in my paintings are the product of a disjointed history and the figures describe how one might function in a fragmented environment. The result is an intimate and shifting relationship between displaced bodies and invented spaces; constructed worlds for each of them to live as agents of their own narrative.
Analyzing my traditional upbringing as a first-generation Bosniak-American in Western society, I generate a platform for dialogue and contemplation around the experience of living between two cultures. I orient veiled figures in different environments to continually shift them from their origin, while alluding to the spiritual and psychological. The spaces in my paintings are the product of a disjointed history and the figures describe how one might function in a fragmented environment. The result is an intimate and shifting relationship between displaced bodies and invented spaces; constructed worlds for each of them to live as agents of their own narrative.
Analyzing my traditional upbringing as a first-generation Bosniak-American in Western society, I generate a platform for dialogue and contemplation around the experience of living between two cultures. I orient veiled figures in different environments to continually shift them from their origin, while alluding to the spiritual and psychological. The spaces in my paintings are the product of a disjointed history and the figures describe how one might function in a fragmented environment. The result is an intimate and shifting relationship between displaced bodies and invented spaces; constructed worlds for each of them to live as agents of their own narrative.