Talija Hrnjak
Northern Beaches Secondary College Freshwater Senior Campus
DISPLACED IDENTITIES
Printmaking
Lino and carborundum printing
My body of work is about the displacement of a person’s identity when they are removed from a traditional homeland. Expressive lines carved into lino plates represent the figures of my grandfather and grandmother currently, and my grandfather in his youth. Using lino and carborundum printing as an exaggerating mechanism, I printed the portrait images onto tarlatan cloth in order to layer the images, creating a blurred multitude of faces and identities. Blurred movement indicates transportation, broadening the scale of identities degenerating as a result of war, specifically identifying the Yugoslav wars which stimulated the mass removal of civilians such as my grandparents.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of William Kentridge’s work, Shadow Processions.
Marker's Commentary
Displaced Identities is a complex, multi layered investigation that moves beyond a personal history to encompass ideas about diaspora and the prevalence of people being displaced due to war across time and culture. The weight and eternal nature of war is personified through a range of motifs but most poignantly through the procession of the dispossessed peoples dragging their worldly possessions, seen in the panoramic carborundum.
Technical prowess is delivered across a range of relief and intaglio printmaking processes whilst the choice and complexity of compositional devices amplify conceptual readings. Multiple images reinforce the recurring nature of war and dispossession, printing on tarlatan cloth suggests ideas of bandaging and makeshift solutions, ghost prints connote ageing, memory, and time. Overall the work demonstrates significant maturity in both its command of material processes and in its evocation of concept.
