Artist Statement: Working nearby ground zero, i could not help but re-experience the day of 9/11 which took place during my last year of high school when i lived in NYC. One of my first associations to this horrific event was the blue sky I experienced that day. So instead of following my initial concept to rework my piano into a heart of veins and arteries of laces on a background of brown wood, i had the need to bring in my immediate associations and feelings. I began to paint my piano with different shades of blue, transforming it into a sky analogous to that of the blue sky i experienced on 9/11 in NYC . I used laces to create an emotional cloud symbolizing the network of memories, and emotions which are traveling all over the globe, in the form of clouds. These emotional clouds are helping , like music, to transform traumas into something more positive and are joining us together on a collective level. The lace clouds are created as a collage, creating an assemblage of various pieces of laces and dollies collected by me from all around the world from various flea markets, some of the laces also being donated to me by various friends. I keep all the laces in the same state as i find then, each revealing and composing its own story, together sown into a bigger constellation they form a collective story. As such, this can also be seen as a recycled cloud, formed out of recycled laces and dollies. My lace works made of thousands of knots and loops express the idea of inter-connectedness and webbing, which is part of us humans, inside our souls and bodies as a biological as well as spiritual phenomenon. We are not just what we see; we are many past generations, feelings, memories and beliefs. These are transported not only by our genes, but also by us being a part of the collective unconscious through dreams, wishes and beliefs, in our hope to attain 'Eden' and Eternity – the state of realization of the triptych of LOVE, BELIEF and HOPE.
Eva Petrič, www.evapetric.com, born in Slovenia, works in Ljubljana (Slovenia), Vienna (Austria), and in New York City (USA), in photography, video, installation, performance and writing. 2005 BA in psychology and visual art at Webster University Vienna, 2010 MFA in new media, Transart Institute New York- Berlin/Danube University Krems (mentors Lucien Clergue, France, and Martina Corgnati, Italy). Member of the Kuenstlerhaus Vienna, the Pen Club Austria, the Writers Association of Slovenia and the Association of Fine Artists of Slovenia. Up to 2016 she had 38 solo exhibitions and participated at 68 group exhibitions in Slovenia, Argentina, Austria, China, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Philippines, Spain, Serbia and USA. Her art was selected for BIAB Biennale 2012 and 2015 in China, 2013 Hong Kong Art Walk, 2011 IPCNY Summer Review, and among others, for Display of the century at ACF New York in 2015, and was selected into group exhibitions in Contemporary art museum in Leipzig, Germany, Museum Moderner Kunst Kaernten in Klagenfurt, Austria, Galerie im Traklhaus, Landes Museum Salzburg, Austria, City Art Museum, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Queens Museum of Contemporary Art,New York,and MassMoCA, USA. She was one of the nominees to represent Slovenia at the 2013 and the 2015 Venice Biennale of Art.