• 11/05/2023

“Exhibition from the closet”, exhibition by Darija Žmak Kunić

On Wednesday, May 10, an exhibition of Rijeka artist and assistant professor of the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka, Darija Žmak Kunić, was opened in the Terra gallery.

Exhibition concept:
The intimate narrative of the work is contained in the fabrics from the mother’s wardrobe, “which remember past touches”. The exhibition consists of 6 works created from fabrics found in the closet and a sound composition created in collaboration with the musician Zoran Medved. The center is a spatial installation of 45 braids, each of which represents a symbolic gratitude to the mother. The sound record is a musical composition created by recording tearing and knitting in the artist’s studio. The smaller format works are three nests of thread that was created as a byproduct of tearing fabrics (symbolically representing the artist’s brothers), then a white blanket with one white braid symbolizing innocence, and a large 7-meter braid that bends around the space.
ART ACTION as part of the exhibition is an interactive art work consisting of an installation and a performance involving the audience. Everyone is invited to “initiate” the relocation of stored, discarded, forgotten, unusable fabrics, and in the intervention that we carry out together, place them in a new, gallery situation.

Biography:

Darija Žmak Kunić (b.1978, Rijeka) is an artist who creates mainly in the field of sculpture, art object, installation and video installation, but her practice also includes experimental sound, drawing, painting and performance. She graduated in 2003 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in the class of prof. Mire Vuce. In 2005, she went to Ljubljana for post-graduate studies at the University of Ljubljana, where in 2008 she obtained a master’s degree in art, majoring in sculpture, in the class of prof. Jože Baršija at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. With her master’s thesis on Mjesečarka, in 2009 she participated as a Croatian representative in the field of visual arts at the 14th European and Mediterranean Youth Biennale. The exploration of personality, identity, memory and individual mythology is a frequent motif in her works, expressed interactively and through multiple media. She had the status of an independent artist until 2017, when she got a job at the University of Rijeka, Academy
of applied arts, where she works as an associate professor. In 2018 and 2022, she received an award for Teaching Excellence at the University of Rijeka. Since 2000, Darija Žmak-Kunić has been continuously exhibiting at solo and group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. She was awarded for her work. In addition to artistic research, work and creation, her work and activities are also dedicated to cultural animation and the involvement of the local community and different audiences in interactive artistic activities that deal with ideas about community, movement, ecology and art. She is married and the mother of two children.