Artist
Home is a Privilege
Privilege makes it a place known to all, a public entity,
while privacy envelops it with individuality.
An evasive eruption of mystery and loss, it is a foreign concept, ever elusive, it runs through space always ahead and never looking back to be sure that I follow, a parent self-assured that I will always be there; and yet, completely lost,
I am blind to its existence.
In and of itself, I can master it, define it, give it a location, but meaningless, it floats away from me, without connection or solidarity, nothingness pervades.
What is it that makes a home? I try once more to wrap it with my wounds, skin grafting and bones attaching, but the reminder being omniscient, calls out, stranger, foreigner, terms oddly permissive in their nature in allowing one meaning to override another. Human should connect us over stranger, foreigner, yet it does not, a dominance provided through dominion, defines my nationality, wherever I plot the point that grounds me in this terrestrial kingdom.
Gasping, a sigh of futility, a sigh of inequity wherever I go I am the shadow, which forms your identity, a contrast to your own definition of self and distinction, home is a privilege unavailable to me, an unimaginable entity. 

Exquisite Exodus 
What a strange thing it is to think that air travels inside my body and then into yours, we are never distinct from one another, perhaps that is what is so frightening about the void of space, the night never changes, it is always darkness here, it drains all the colors from the day.
When I remember the feeling of belonging it is only with you, the blue sky, you follow me and I am always longing for you when darkness comes and brings the cloud soaked haze above me. 
My life I carry on my back, a blueness of day emblazoned upon it.  A burden of belongings and yet not belonging anywhere, my slightest faults a branding of experiences on my skin.  Don’t hear me, don’t see me, I plead with you, the blue sky, for I miss you when you are away, you make me feel like there is a reason for everything.  In exile, I wonder in my mind, alone, tasked with the chore of fitting in, of constant movement, contrary to this undefined task. Like overlapping currents of water, I pass on top and under, blending in if I can, or foaming up and breaking in silence.
With or without you, I will continue in exile. A gradual dispersal of matter over time, flesh scattered hastily across this land, as I run, an exquisite exodus of matter, cells splitting and shaping again hoping to count this time towards something grander, something worth it, worth your notice.
​Then, there is a change, a metamorphosis, the light falls from me, I am slowing down, I am more aware of each second.  I am afraid and awestruck, somehow grateful, and falling – a completely new sensation, a new me.  I travel, I feel, I am something.  I wonder what has happened.  I begin to affect others like me, by running into them.  I see something, an echo of what I was before, a light and then I realize that I am witnessing the moment when everything slowed down, I am passing it by as I shift in space and reattach myself to the light.  I try to grab on, but I am still falling, it is glorious, and inescapable.  There are others here, they see me and share my sense of wonder, gleefully traveling through the airless vacuum that surrounds them.
Taking Sides
I tried to stay in the middle, not to connect myself in any way to one place or another, one way or another, one road, one path, one river, but you kept pushing me, and through the pressure, I became aware of myself, my coordinates on this map of time and space. They seem to be the same really, time and space, as if we can never move forward in time unless we can move in space.
You are my family, but you remain frozen in place.  I can see each side as if I am looking through a viewfinder covering one eye for a moment, I see a little more to the left and then uncovering and covering the other eye, I see a little more to the right. It is like that, my understanding of your perspective, of the family trust and suspicion, of centuries of misunderstanding, now commemorated in death and gravestones.
Our history, is a shared monument, a constructed past, enlivened by the official records of state and the versions from one nation to another, told in many classrooms.  We are points, divided and recycled, my identity is a conglomeration fabricated from multiple perspectives and divisions, sliced in a geometry of emotion, that has no relation to probability or fractions. Symmetry a foreign emphasis and landscape a comforting divide with beauty in its rugged facets, gemstones of light glisten in the eyes of your descendants.
​
In Suite Oran, a poem is broken up and repeated, overlapping, creating confusion. It is a poem about love and friendship, about confusion between the boundaries we set between those we care about. It was created in Oran, Algeria.
​
Suite Oran: A Wary Thing it is
1
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A wary thing it is, when we cross the boundaries of love and friendship.
In contrast, moments alone send compliments to moments together, hoping to merge at last; one.

Love takes the upper branch leaving me tossed over a tree limb, a helpless ragdoll waiting for something to happen, anything at all.
​
An act of nature or derision, will do, to change my status on this branch, my belly pressed tightly in an uncomfortable position; breathing is something I was never so aware of.

The Faculty of Love, take their seats and they review the matter. Each sending their summations, a customary call to order and my fate resembles secondary school, and the lost elements of youth.

Your pride might be the matter, what matters most to you. I am here just waiting, a torsion in text, I try to tell myself lies, to excuse away what can never be excused; my longing, left out on the table for all to see, as some private comfort, with which, an incendiary remark cast out by accident, might reveal my inner toil.

I would surrender to you my liberty, but does this mean our union has already failed? Isn’t it important what I want. I say it as a statement, not really a question, for the answer should be circumspect around the room we travel. But it isn’t and I twist this tale inside me and I hope.

She lies beside my old self, gesturing, blind, and covered in black linen from the Chest of Hope in far off lands. Is it really possible, this she, was once me? Her coiled thoughts carefully coiffed to present themselves as tame?

You have a name, I keep safe within the hole that once was a young girl’s heart.

I didn’t mean for this to happen, to fall so emphatically, but I have and you’re a whisp of thin air traveling along trade routes, siphoning away the mystery of my regrets into your own perils of anatomy and hopelessness.

Does anyone dare look inside the pot, to know what the witches’ brew withstands? I can, but, just endure it for the feeling drives me from my path. I know this is an indication of a fate already sealed, but I wish, and I wish, and I wish, imagining
​a lyrical rendering at best, and a twisting of circumstance at least.
​You might never see me again, but I have this, my words, the proof I need, that I can love just as if it is an ordinary act of faith, and I wait, just a little longer for my fate to join me, a girl by my side, that once was myself and my pride.
​
But, I wonder, if you will forgive me this indulgence of my personality, this wish that eternity might link us, wholeheartedly, in an embrace of passion and integrity. It is more than you expected from me and now you have to recreate the boundary between us.

​2

To balance is to weigh the things that drag you down, to weigh out circumstance as if there is a chance at something else. 

I don’t feel that way. More that it will all turn out rather badly as usual, but I try desperately to hold onto the edge of it, fingers as talons, awkward facets of tissue and tendon, the claws of my newborn shape, shifting into it, a monster of memory and guilt, hiding inside as I speak.

You, filled with your own fear, probably not so different inside, but your exterior as calm as any one thing held in vision, with another one of wanting.

Surety it is that tells me that I saw something on your face, a sadness that would envelop you, perhaps. Have I mistaken it for love?

3

Waiting for some time, some time that you might have to release to me and uncover my words, an archeology of thought and tears within and without. I relish in moments that were not so precious, a second of thought, a glance and exchange,
tête à tête, we plunge into what we wish in the moment,
​me wondering if, you, feel the refreshing blast of water on your face as I do, when we speak.

4

Once more, I just want to rush the line, file down the borders and kiss you- a fruit almost too ripe to cherish.  I would give you all that I have, if I had anything but my small self; I am hidden in the corner, under the tree that brought you to me, its roots in Africa and its branches stretched across the sea, a medi-terrain, a world away. 
​Blind Ambition is about rejection. It incorporates the reading of rejection letters aloud with photos of the Macedonian countryside as viewed from a dirty car window.

Mind Labyrinth

Mind Labyrinth
 an interactive video and sound installation
 
“Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.”
Stephen Hawking
 
Mind Labyrinth is an interactive video installation, which was created while I was an artist-in-residence at WBmotion in Wittenberg, Germany. It combines my own voice with the voices of other artists at the residency and their thoughts on identity along with photos and video, which I took at the Lutherhaus and on the train to Wittenberg. The work is about identity and the boundaries that we create and which are created by internal and external influences in relation to language, borders, and nationalism. 

​In my mind I am free
Unsettling as it may be
I think about all of the things that happen during the day
and sometimes they build walls.
I follow these paths that lead me nowhere
and yet, they lead me everywhere.
I hear all languages at once and uniquely,
 and yet, I am still me.
I find the rhythm of things comforting
and yet, with each repetition,
my identity diminishes just a little bit more.
My mind is a labyrinth
a space where I can travel
In and out
lost in its patterns
lost in its willingness
I find myself.
In this moment there are trees
forming walls around me
I reach out my hands
Touching them
feeling the texture
the scratchy surface of things.
I move
lost, blind, unable to understand
how the space is formed and where to turn.
It is a blind effort
wandering through this wilderness
there are forms in nature
 that repeat themselves
that take us through a spiral
twisting and twisting
each time augmenting
and turning again,
​​but here this is not a spiral
this is some other kind of form.
Walls that build themselves
in corners and out of corners.
Turning,
twisting,
forming again,
splitting
and then blocking.
I wander through this labyrinth
this part of my mind
where all of the things
that I have learned
have formed walls
they’ve built something here
all the others
the people on the outside
all of the things that we see in morality
the things that we see in society
they are here
reflecting me
and I am wandering
through this labyrinth in my mind.
I touch the walls
hoping for something open
for an opportunity
for a window
a place where light can fall
a place where light can penetrate
something to lead me
into another reality
 a universe that is me.
Liquid Nation is a piece about the current state of the US and the feelings of an artist and teacher to take responsibility for the past and to lead the way in terms of encouragement, strength, leadership, and meliorism. It relates to the famous I have a dream speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., the narrator stating that she dreams with Martin. 
I dream with Martin
I look around and I see blue skies. The same blue skies that shelter the great continents of the Earth, of our Earth. I live in the shadow of the greatness that is our planet and our galaxy, the awareness of which is owed to the great thinkers of humanity, those who dared to look up and wonder, those who stood their ground and dared to voice something that was not readily accepted, their voices a long call to freedom, from a place so deep within the soul of humanity, that it is hardly discernable from thunder. 
I wonder myself, what is our future, when I consider our collective past, for the history of the human race is my history, and I hold myself accountable for all its mysteries, and all its tragedies. I long to think of myself as a citizen of the world, Socrates heart echoing a message distilled through the voices of his students and finally reaching me. I am an artist, a teacher, a leader, a person with influence beyond what I would like to consider in my conscious mind, but sometimes I am all too aware of this fact. ​

​I carry the world on my back, my students burning brightly in effigy, their minds a tribute to the face of human history, reflect that which is within me, that which is our collective history. I hope that they will not repeat the mistakes of man, but will leave this fire to die out and walk across the ashen battlefields planting seeds of hope for a world community, for a world family.
I dream with Martin, that the content of their character will be more important than the cultural currency we now rely on with irony. I dream that we will no longer see ourselves as a part of a great nation, but that we will let die that which no longer functions and leave to grow the seeds which our children now plant, allowing space for their insight and their hopes and dreams. I hope to let go of my own faults, to be a leader when they are unsure, when they need to know that there is someone who will stand with them in solidarity, no matter what the cost to myself or to our society. I see our future, their future, the future, and it exists in a galaxy that we cannot even see. 
​Araf is about the borderland, the space between heaven and hell, where there is the possibility of everything and nothing is defined. It is about shamanism in Cappadocia, Turkey. The symbol of the horse running inside of a cave relates to the Hittites who used the underground cities to hide from their enemies and to the name, Cappadocia, which means land of beautiful horses. The spirits of these horses run underground, beneath our modern buildings, in a netherland called, Araf.
​Shadows in the Sky  is about how art becomes our voice in times when we feel we cannot express ourselves directly.  It links Turkish cultural traditions from the past to the modern day, using the shadow play as a metaphor for life. The film incorporates the voices of Turkish people who lived through the Gezi Park experience of 2013. 
Borders was created while I was an artist-in-residence in Budapest, Hungary.  It is about one's relationship with the constantly changing borders of a country such as Hungary.
This is a docuart piece about identity and borders, I created while I was an artist-in-residence in Belgrade, Serbia.  
It involves the participation of the following Serbian artists and their thoughts and opinions on borders, mobility, and identity:   
Gordana Žikić, Boško Begović, Predrag Damjanović , Katarina Rašić,  Miroslav Karić, Ivan Šuletić .