Tina Dobrajc: Big Girls Don’t Cry

The artist Tina Dobrajc in her solo exhibition titled Big Girls Don’t Cry, presents recent paintings and multimedia works, focused on the current political situation, the national mythology and gender issues. On her canvases, in mixed techniques, the artist depicts imaginary places and scenes that serve as a metaphor for everyday phenomena in the world that surrounds and leaves its marks on her.
The exhibited works are unique allegories of the present moment and can be understood both particularly and universally, as they apply to local as well as global socio-political situation. On the one hand, the artist explores themes of national and cultural identity, which is becoming an increasingly hot topic of public discourse in the European countries; on the other hand, she focuses on the role of women in these societies, which are torn between the desire to preserve tradition and the inevitability of progress. The idea to preserve existing prosperity brings with it numerous consequences, which are often in conflict with hard won civil rights of different social groups. The works of Tina Dobrajc are often based on selected fragments of everyday life, which, in its distortion, absurdity and irony, are becoming grim witnesses of some of the most crucial social phenomena of the given moment.

Text: Miha Colner

Photo: Tomaž Grdin, GBJ archive