Mia Matijević Akrap

Protagonist, 2022., acrylic and oil on canvas, 160×128 cm, Play, 2021., acrylic and oil on canvas, 35×28 cm

„It is evident that the approach in which the painter indulges in the vision of her first impressions, unencumbered child’s gaze, unrestrained attitude towards the choice of motifs from memory and photographs, compositions and free surface treatments created vivid scenes attractive to the eye. This is also due to very arbitrarily chosen, sometimes blurred colours, a kind of enumeration of motifs of distorted memory. On the one hand, she shows a sensibility for pure children’s play but also suspects that playing with the painting should be persistent.“

Mia Matijević Akrap (1995., Požega) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2020. She primarily expresses herself through painting and ceramics. She has exhibited in four solo and numerous group exhibitions, participated in three residency programs (France, Germany, Lithuania) and Erasmus + professional practice (Germany). She is the winner of four Rector’s Awards, two commendations from the Academy of Fine Arts, an award „Kolekcionar umjetniku“ at 36th Youth Salon and an audience award Erste Fragments. She is currently a resident at Cité internationale des arts in Paris.