Nevena Prijic depicts the universal body and its merger with machines, plants, and insects. Through the lens of biomorphism, she employs intense hues with various painterly techniques to manifest radiant and translucent new forms. They are thus futuristic in nature, yet inspired by artifacts of the Neolithic Vincha culture of present-day Serbia, operating in the swirl of ancient art history and science-fiction. Prijic emphasizes the evolution of the body and its fusion with technology and natural organisms. Her process starts with broad strokes, sprays, and planes of color over which she progressively layers more detailed and granular elements. By virtue of each one remaining translucent like a jellyfish or plastic sheathing, Prijic renders visible her painting’s progressive states of becoming; this conceptually mirrors the expansiveness of her forms, for they appear to evolve from the past to the future, to death and back again. In this porous time continuum, they are at once insectoid, botanical, humanoid, and cyborg; they reflect an interconnectedness of all things, a universal living body.
Nevena Prijic (b. 1985, Belgrade, Serbia) earned her BFA and MFA in Painting from The University of Novi Sad, Academy of Fine Arts, Serbia. Recent solo exhibitions include Skin of the Sun, M+B, Los Angeles; Common Pulses, BOZOMAG, Pasadena; and The Overview Effect, Gallery ALSP, Los Angeles. Her work was also recently included in a group show at the Orlando Museum of Art in Florida. Nevena Prijic lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.