My work incorporates images, artist books and paper installations into a form of world making. These manifest composite memories that reflect my experiences and perspectives living, traveling and studying in Europe and the United States.
Being a person from a country that no longer exists, I find myself cobbling an identity from my adopted country (US) and my country of origin, Slovakia and the places I have lived in between. This world making is important because as a non-native speaker I am often put in the role of “other”. By creating my own country, Tajtania, which is derived from my name and nick names, I am creating a phenomenological space that can be experienced by viewers based on their own familiarities. The unit based folded paper pieces act as a grammatical structure from which I can construct architectural spaces drawn from my wide travel experiences and can be taken down and reconstructed in response to new spaces and new challenges all the while absorbing and combining these new experiences.
I combine the constantly changing nature of culture, language, physical geography and architecture to make my own fluid and responsive language.
See progress images and books videos on Instagram at “Cityoftajtania”
