‘The Invisible Silence, and it's Unknown Nostalgia'​ 2021 - 2022
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If we are indeed merely passing through this world, Bijanka’s current paintings work to understand what it means in the now. Learned histories drawn from the arts, philosophy and culture enter her large canvases as abstracted forms inspired by motifs and metaphors that continue to influence our ever-changing modern world.
A chosen small sketch sets into motion a symphony of form and hand-mixed pigments on canvas; playing, diving and falling in rhythms to find their own harmony with each other, and their maker. This painted universe embraces both intention and chance, and opens a place of priori where the past, present and future commingle to tell a new story of the now: A story with an inspired beginning, and an unknown ending, as each viewer is greeted with an open door leading them to various pathways and conversations.
Bijanka’s recent series titled, “The Invisible Silence and it’s Unknown Nostalgia” allows viewers to enter human-scale paintings of energized movements and forms in flux, through a door of something familiar. Colorful abstractions reveal part of a figure, perhaps? Maybe the bow of a boat, or a door…? These cues then lead us to explore further, possibly recognizing nostalgia for the Divine Garden given to us but never experienced, the hell of being in a sea of lost people, or somewhere in-between where a tear reveals true relationship, and silence is broken. Along with seekers before us including Manet, Rothko, Gorky, Blake and others, we can all find ourselves somewhere in this layered visual history of now.
What started off as scattered ideas in Bijanka’s mind, forms into a web of complex beauty with spiral detailing of knotted ideologies and symbolic languages. Waiting to entangle its audiences within threads, an interaction that builds further layers of meaning on an emotional, social and even political level. This experience confirms Bijanka’s belief in a visual language that can open boundaries to better communicate our contemporary environment and create a web of new human connections.
Installation photos of exhibition at CICA Museum, 2022
The Poets are Dancing’ ​2020 - 2018
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‘The Poets are Dancing’ is a collection of works created over three years. It started within her final year at National Art School and ended once she moved overseas to London.
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The diversity of styles relates to her exploration to find a permanent vision that is deeply connected to the universal. Where these works are seen as a chaotically orchestrated surface, that feels familiar yet obscured with its vibrating colours and abstracted figures. ​Her creative process draws from the restless motion of movement. By extracting various silhouettes of figures in motion, she places them in an unsequenced manner onto the canvas. Where their form gives her absolute freedom to play with the application of colour and the boundaries between line and body. In a way, Bijanka is working with these contour lines to then dismiss it. Allowing her to find a way out of the form, to then let the subconscious arise within the painting.
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This process is derived from demonstrating nature’s intent of the equilibrium. An idea that we are constantly striving to find balance through unequal opposites or a so-called collaboration of contradictions. Therefore, Bijanka’s body of work represents her need to find a balance within the world of abstraction and representation, which mirrors our battle with the metaphysical.
