ON WHAT IT IS ABOUT
(with gratitude to William Carlos Williams and Empedocles of Agrigentum)

About some kind of efflorescence
some sort of chorus whispering up a thunder
some kind of radiating every which way
from the center off center
some porous logic of scattering
About looking for confluences

all that washes up on the beach and
that gets caught in the roots
by rivers’ edge all that cat brings in
all that turns up before my feet
small and shiny all that speaks
all languages all by itself
About artistic intention

to somersault to another planet
and back as in a movie reversed
pour molten metal in the lake
tilt a bowl of milk over cobblestones
and cut and paste myself into another file.
All of that requires knowhow.
About knots and meanings happened upon

all that depends on a red wheel barrow
on the proper technique of flying
by the seat of my pants
waiting to pounce waiting to release
and desperate, yearning hope that particles 
will find each other.



I use languages of drawing, printmaking, photography and poetic text to explore questions of cultural belonging, hybridity and memory.  I work on and with the paper, the substrate civilizations are recorded upon and the platform that is being eclipsed by digital recording methods: the last bastion of tactility in the world of data and ideas.  The processes themselves and metaphors they offer, the physicality of paper and drawing media, the visual sources I use, all inform my work.
There is is no discernible center of my images,  and the floating elements come in and out of focus, alternatively anchoring and orbiting others, settling nowhere permanently. I use perspective, but not as illusionistic tool. I cultivate the space in drawing or print that is polyphonic and at times contradictory. The works are metaphorical maps of change, perishing and memory.  They beg for highly individualized, poetic translation.  I hope that the viewer sees them the way one sees a familiar thicket of weeds one day, in particular moment, in particular light, suddenly awash in form and meaning. 
 
Tanja Softić