MEMORARIUM – Dijana Tomik Radevska

National Gallery of Macedonia and Gallery MC of New York

Kindly invites You to the opening of an Exhibition by

Dijana Tomik Radevska

MEMORARIUM

June 14 th , 2006 – Opening 6 – 9 pm.
Dijana is a special collector of memories. She collects them as others collect rare objects, stickers, insects, all kinds of trinkets. One could say she collects her own biography! This is true. And the basis of this part of her collection is childhood. Here, I emphasize the words “this part” since her biographical collection – the largest part of her work of twenty years – is autobiographical and self-referential in character. For almost twenty years she has been “digging” through her own biography in different media (prints, collage, video, objects, installations), through the “family iconostasis” and genealogy, through the personal and family stories and genetic codes, thus impressively visualizing her own intimate history. After all, it has never been any different. Art has always been based on the personal feelings and memories, experiences and views, passions and perspectives/fears of the artist. With the death of Modernism and grand projects/themes, it was Postmodernism that opened the doors to “small stories”, personal truths and interpretations. If what is no longer important, then how is definitely important! In this regard, Dijana is a typical meticulous Postmodernist. She is a phenomenon quite rare among her generation of Macedonian artists. The entire structure of her output can be “read” as a compact Postmodern manual of questions and answers based on her exceptional knowledge of art history, the classics of Postmodern philosophy, pragmatic methodology and the rich stratigraphy of her work. During a period of twenty years she has strategically and gradually explored and developed the whole Postmodern arsenal – from intertextuality and intermediality to écriture féminine, quotation, self-referentiality, interactivity, etc. Quite comfortably, without any restraint and with a certain amount of perfectionism, using all the available media, her output has practically kaleidoscopically “stratified” all levels of her personality: I and the Other; the question of identity; presence/absence; genetic heritage; memory…

Zlatko Teodosievski