MATEJA ŠMIC, AESTHETICS OF A SPLIT

August 23rd to September 14th 2019

Engage Art Studios are delighted to present an exhibition of the work of NCAD graduate Mateja Šmic opening on the 23rd of August and running until the 14th of September.
Šmic is one of this year’s chosen graduates in the CIRCA Degree Shows: Writers’ Choice series.
Mateja Šmic is a Dublin-based artist working with coffee, gelatin and other often non-traditional materials, chosen by principles of association with her subject matter. Her recent subjects range from geopolitics to national identity. Through printmaking, digital collage, video and animation, Šmic’s installations combine philosophical and psychological questions around experience, the phenomenon of Othering, and tensions between the real subject and its mediated representations. Consisting of intensive cycles and processes of intuitive and experimental engagement with her materials, which become a metaphor for an intangible subject, Smic’s reflexive and multi-layered art practice parallels with her contextual research and writing.

Mateja Šmic was born in 1989, in Croatia. Moving to Ireland in 2015, she enrolled at NCAD in 2016. Šmic formed Clo Collective in 2018, comprised of a group of artists working at NCAD, their work was presented at IMMA as part of a response to Brian O’Doherty’s exhibition Language and Space that year. She participated in The Office for Common Sound project led by Sven Anderson, at NCAD Gallery, in 2019, and exhibited and presented new work at Graphic Studio Gallery, 2019. Her Graduate Exhibition has been long-listed for the RDS Visual Art Award, and she will take part in the international curatorial course, WCSCD, in Belgrade this Autumn.