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Irena Gayatri Horvat – Croatia

Visual Artist

I am Irena Gayatri Horvat. I come from Zagreb, Croatia. My university, Academy of Fine Arts, I completed in Zagreb, specializing in painting. While there, I realized I preferred drawing to painting and also there was good graphical equipment and I started to do graphic (printmaking) techniques. As I made art works, I began mixing both.

When I traveled, I began to investigate different materials. In the Himalayas, I found a special kind of paper. This paper allowed me to make something like holograms. When I put color then a layer of paper, which becomes transparent, down , then another color and the paper, you could see that which is down and that which is up. It somehow reminds me of past and the present, and it can also the future inside all of that. Out of this preoccupation, I began to think about connections between different nationalities.

When I was traveling, the most important thing for me was to sit in some holy places. In holy places I can find this energy, this spirit, to see what is important for the people. For example, while I was sitting in a church, I was observing where the people were going, what was important for them to touch, to look. Then usually I took with me paper to put on the floor where they were stepping, and I take a trace. Usually the traces were not alone because the stone is very, very old and inside is many, many layers of generations. so in that way, I am taking impressions of the history of nations. For me, it like one kind of diary. Inside, there is everything—the past, present, and future of that people.

My future work will be about that. To collect traces of people around the world and to give some message to the people to show them how we are simple and very much the same: what is important to us, what is important in one Christian church or in some Buddhist temple or Indian Hindu—around the world. Just what is important...to find peace inside the heart. And this is what inspires me. It is thinking about holy things in the life: what is holy for us, the family, something that makes warmth around your heart. This is the thing I want to have in my paintings. I want to have this energy in the canvas. Because of that I am using that paper which was made by hand and I also use pigments which are also made by hand in the old way, and I am always thinking about the energy and handwork...how to put all of this together in my art.