‘Whether with portraits, which she terms ‘faces’, architecture, referred to as ‘build’, or landscapes, ‘land’, Kulenovic’s aim is to capture an ambiance or psychological state. She creates a coherent world where all of the subjects in her paintings, figures as well as places, are at the same time protagonists and also settings of her ‘still narratives’. They are marked by traces of past events or filled with anticipation of impending ones, they haunt and are haunted.
Clearly there is a relationship to realism in her imagery, but the world depicted is one entirely different from the world we identify as factual reality. While the viewer may be tempted to think of the imagery in the paintings as depicting past or present, it would be more accurate to think of it in terms of speculative fiction, distorted memories, dreams or premonitions about the future.
Maya Kulenovic is currently represented by galleries in USA, Canada and The Netherlands.’