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Sanja Simeunović Bajec

29/08/2025

Have you ever wondered – is your destiny, your relationships with other people, your friendships and love just a coincidence or is there a hidden weave of time and space that, like a thread, leads you to your destiny? In many threads, legends about the threads of destiny, the threads that connect us to other people, our mother’s womb, our subconscious or our spiritual soul, are intertwined.

The legend of the red thread, popular in Asian countries, especially in China and Japan, contains a story full of symbolism about relationships, love and destiny, but it also tells us about the way in which, as human beings, we experience these phenomena and accept them as part of our lives. The symbolism of the thread conveys that our logic of the expected does not have the expected outcome – because threads always weave their own unpredictable, emotional story. Another powerful symbolism of the thread is presented in the ancient myth of Theseus and Ariadne, and it tells of Theseus’ entry into a dark labyrinth to kill the terrible minotaur, a monster that is half man – half bull. From the labyrinth, Theseus successfully finds a way out of a difficult situation thanks to the unwound ball of wool that Ariadne gave him. If we delve deeper into the symbolism of this myth, we discover that this labyrinth is ourselves, hidden from ourselves, and with support, love and trust we can destroy even the darkest corners of our personality, and emerge into the light as winners.

Sanja intuitively feels this unpredictable power of human connection and misguided alienation, so she chose the motif of threads as a buried pedestal, an archetypal signpost of an “exit” from the emotional strata of the family past, to express her emotions through the labyrinth of paintings she exhibited. Through the evocative choreography of her abstract paintings, the ritualistic movement of crumpled tailor paper that creates a tactile, surreal landscape of emotions – red linear punctuations and black acrylic, mesh-like writings that intersect the surface of the painting, giving it a dramatic scream of life – her works explore the fluidity of time

An abstract “assemblage” of surreal atmosphere, created by combining collage, cutting paper, tissue paper, acrylic and charcoal. The artist perfectly balances between the minimalism of the elegant choice of colors (ochre and red) and the luxurious whites, in order to articulate the painting in the end with a strong, artistic gesture of strokes of graphite shades and black. This is Sanja’s recognizable intimate style of painting, to which she has been consistent for many years. In the dialogue between spontaneity and thoughtfulness, she does not give up on the subtle palette and azure color spreads, an atmospheric perspective that she counterposes with the expressive gesture of drawing. She combines various artistic techniques and boldly experiments with other materials and expressive means.

An artist with a defined style creates a memorable space, where lost memories are returned and reimagined through an uninterrupted narrative of the flow of time and desire in a distinctive, honest and powerful way that does not leave us indifferent. May this exhibition inspire us for personal introspection and finding our way out of the darkness of the labyrinth into light and hope.

Kristina Tamara Franić Koulen, art historian

Sanja Simeunović Bajec was born in Pula on November 6, 1975. She graduated from the School of Applied Arts and Design in Pula, and in 1999 graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka, Department of Fine Arts, Painting Department, in the class of Prof. Ksenija Mogin. Today she works at the School of Applied Arts and Design – Pula as a professor of professional subjects. In addition to her artistic work and work at the school, she is the president of the More Association, in which she is the founder of the Artić art and creative workshop, which has been active in Karlo Rojc for twenty-three years. For her pedagogical work, as a mentor, she has received numerous awards. In the Studentski Gallery of the Pula student dormitory, she is the moderator of the gallery program, which encourages the exhibition of young artists.

So far, she has had about thirty solo exhibitions, which have been presented in many other cities besides her home town. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. The most significant cycles are “Between Two Worlds”, “Reality, Illusion and Shadows”, “That Thread”, “Recycling the Mind”, “Records” and “Echoes of Blue”.

She has been a member of HDLU Istria since 2001, where she is currently a member of the Board of Directors.Članica je Hdlu-a Istre od 2001.g. u kojem je trenutno i član Upravnog odbora.