Biography

Marija Stankovic, born in 1992, is an architect and designer with a passion for visual arts and fashion. She currently works as a freelance, based in Belgrade, her hometown, working on several projects, in particular on collages. It is in fact in this technique that the Serbian artist finds her artistic manifestation. In particular, her studies in photography and graphic design directed her towards this medium. The influence of architecture is evident and reflected in her modus operandi: wherever she travels, Marija is attracted above all by the buildings she photographs, and from these photographs she draws collages, playing with proportions and depth, and creating a new reality. in the combination of extraordinary scenes and ordinary elements. The artist participated as CCTraveller in the CCT-SeeCity project for Palermo, the Italian Capital of Culture 2018, creating a very personal story of the city through the language of collage, mixing photography and graphics, and thus creating original postcards.

Philosophy

To create her collages Marija combines photos of the architectures that most struck and fascinated her during her travels, with geometric elements, but not only, the purely architectural elements are enlivened by bold colours and imaginary elements because, according to the poetics of artist, creativity has no and must not have limits: “In architecture and art, I always find the story behind the project fascinating and how it is reflected in the final form. The shapes, colours and their interaction have always aroused my interest because there are infinite combinations and each person will solve it in their own unique way, and that’s the beauty of it”.

Artwork in Castagno

Already after his first visit through the streets of the village of Castagno, the idea was clear: to create a collage of the most representative places that make Castagno so special: the station, the church, the bell tower, the fountain in the main square and the nature that surrounds the village, also inspired by the stories and suggestions of the inhabitants themselves. The final product is a digital collage with the salient and historical points of the place: the details of the fountain on the square, the writing of the road signs, the addition of glass elements on the church, to fill but also to emphasise the cracks and peeling of the walls. . These white details, together with some red elements, want to be a reference to the colours of the flag of the municipality of Pistoia. The collage is therefore the result of the photographs taken during the artist’s stay in Castagno. Once printed they were assembled and then the collage thus formed was covered with a transparent plexiglass. To create a larger effect, the artist then assembled two additional pieces of plexiglass on top of the first, to form a further layer. As a final artistic touch Marija added some simple free-line drawings, to emphasise some characteristic details of the chosen photos, such as the freehand drawing of an olive branch placed between the columns of the church, a tribute to the beautiful nature that surrounds Chestnut.

Curiosity: Marija Stankovic has also created a series of art postcards for Castagno, always with the same style or combining photography and graphics through the collage technique (see above).