Lea Ovčina

Stories told must face the present and see it stands differently

Lithographs and etchings on washi, knitted lace, konnyaku paste, machine sewn; Prints treated with rice paste then moulded over coffee pot and cups. Two-layer lithograph with selective inking.

“This body of work is an exploration into how inherited memory intersects lived memories and relationships. Working through my own distanced relationship with place and belonging, to understand where I fit into the narrative with limited personal experience of defining a ‘home’ country. Despite often being an integral understanding of oneself, it primarily exists as a notion of absence. A by-product of my family’s varying relationships with leaving ex-Yugoslavia – now Bosnia – has given me agency in building an independent interpretation of where I am from and understanding what my idea of ‘Self’ was built from. The understanding of how one is connected to their past – even one that is not necessarily their own lived experience – falls to the movement of stories and objects passed from distant hands to familiar hands, to one’s own hands. Working in lithography and intaglio, these prints accumulate as material for further manipulation. Both through sewing the prints and creating three-dimensional forms, the process of reworking the flat paper and moulding them on the real objects intends to help embody my memories into something tangible. These passed-down objects often become removed from their initial purpose, taking on a sculptural identity instead, in efforts to preserve those memories. Visual and material memory is the most definite way of knowing a memory is mine and constructed by me. Situating a memory within the visual details that it took place in, extracting those and using the patterns, motifs, colours rooted in floral, environmental and lace in my prints, constructs a new version of these objects to accentuate ordinary interactions. Such as the routine of making Bosnian coffee, the movement of pouring it for those you are surrounded by and reflecting on the stories I have absorbed through years of meeting family around coffee. Despite most often being unfamiliar with specificity of place, the emotional connections both between storyteller-me and storyteller-context lend to my understanding, and how they contrast with my lived experience.”