Somewhere else (Someplace different)

Katrina Jurjans was born in 1989 in Canada. Her art is inspired by emotional narratives, boundaries in space, the representation of the body and women. In 2014, she graduated from Concordia University with a degree in Art History and Studio Art.

Since then, Katrina Jurjans has exhibited in Canada and abroad. She has also participated in art residencies in Mexico, Canada and Denmark.

The artist explains her art as follows: "My painting practice explores concepts of memory, transition and emotion within a larger context of female identity and representation. Critically responding to historical female representation within the canon of Western art history, where women – predominantly painted by men – were represented as polished, contained and separate from their surroundings – I instead paint women fully immersed in both their physical and emotional environments. Sometimes flesh and blood, other times ghostly outlines – they become the fuzzy, porous boundary between foreground and background; past and present; memory and dream. 

Using a formal language of pattern, colour, repetition and layering I create poetic narratives heavy with symbolism, whereflowers embody feelings of absence and growth and rain clouds communicate emotion. Shifting into the realm of magic realism, these narratives – intimate, often nostalgic and heavy – are anchored to the physical world while simultaneously departing into the world of memories, dreams and hallucinations. As a backdrop of floral wallpaper becomes the textile patterns of a woman’s blouse and intricate dot patterns of a cloud slowly transition into tears, my aim is to present both the world and the body in a constant state of reshaping and transformation."