Palmizana Cultural Summer: Jasenka Vukelic - Uprising

A guest blog from Dagmar Meneghello.

ArtPalmizanaMeneghello Summer 2016

JASENKA VUKELIĆ – UPRISING

1.6.-15.6.2016. Terrace Meneghello

Jasenka's paintings point us to the need for togetherness and growth, but only through breakthrough of the codes of the material and accumulated egoism of the present. Sometimes, it seems that we had succesfully „detached“ ourselves from the material world into the high spiritual levels, but that is only our ego's illusion. Only when we start feeling others through love, will we start getting close to the feeling of Pardes

We do not need to specially sensitize the world around us in order to notice that, beside humans, nature around us – from stones, minerals, plants, simple organisms to all animals – has been integrated and connected into a complete system. Nature is in balance, while we have lost the ability to feel a complete unity with it, and with the Creator. Nevertheless, to grow spiritually, and to return love and light into our lives, we need to move away from our egos, return to the roots from the state of being “outside of nature”, and connect with other people like an echo of the collective soul.

In a new cycle of paintings called “Upraise/Izlazak” , Ms. Jasenka Vukelić creates a very personal cosmogony in which she searches for the light and the spirit of Paradise on Earth. Our artist’s inspiration for the theme of departing Pardes, except our everyday existence, is the Middle Ages text about four who entered Pardes – but only one departed – which nowadays is quite present in our lives because the burden of this dimension of reality clearly points to the peak of that distant unbalance, and to the need to return the harmony of heavenly spheres. Our lives are chaotic, and it seems that there is no coincidence in the fact that more and more artists lately turn to motifs from nature. In Jasenka Vukelić’s case there is no coincidence or unawareness, it is not just a signal of the need to contemplate, meditate, detach or isolate, it is a reflex of her desire to glorify the divine creation through bond between Heaven and Earth.

At first glance, a boy and a girl stand in front of us. The little shaman girl is taken through nature/world by our artist, however, she is in fact a metaphor for the Mother – Creator, the Creation itself, who walks through Cabalistic Tree of Life connecting the low levels of reality with the top ones, with a clear symbolism of the so-called language of roots and branches. Different crowns added to the girl by the artist, are an attribute to the proximity of crossing into Heaven, of entering a divine world, as well as the divine powers.

The power of the female part of creation (binah) is seen in Jasenka's paintings through the abundance of nature, presence of different animal spiritual guides and guardians, and multiple deep plans in the paintings' composition, which have been painted with matrices close to Op-art. The strong illusion of paintings is a metaphor of imagery of our corporeal world from which we can hardly disconnect, but once we decide to begin a spiritual travel unimaginably rich world opens to us, the world which, at this materialistic level, we imagine as a tropical heaven. The birds carry a special function in Jasenka's paintings, because they connect us with the music of heavenly spheres through sound frequencies, with Paradies for which we so long for.

Our form in the spiritual world has a different shape, but the emotions we feel through different experiences of giving and receiving are unchanged, and should always yearn for the pure joy of creation. This is the reason for cyclic connection of Jasenka's paintings. They point us to the need for togetherness and growth, but only through breakthrough of the codes of the material and accumulated egoism of the present. Sometimes, it seems that we had succesfully „detached“ ourselves from the material world into the high spiritual levels, but that is only our ego's illusion. Only when we start feeling others through love, will we start getting close to the feeling of Pardes.

IVA KÔBLER