Urban stories wrapped in rolls
Works of the artist Mimoza Studenica create an affection and sensation with the images that reflect the artistic motifs in the filigree state. Each of them, in particular, is a parting moment captured on paper and focused as filigree, which as a. single entity creates an artistic self-supporting structural configuration, with colours and shapes wrapped in spirals or those knitted wave upon wave, create the image of the breeze fluttering gently while Mimoza precisely, convincingly, manages the game. To her, nothing is sudden, but on the contrary, with a geometry of thinking correctly and designed in the three dimensions, begins and ends art and craft, exploring all possible ways that technical configuration allows in wrapping the paper. All this thinking and artistic stunt, designed in this artistic technique could be seen as a liaison with her vocation, the design that revels naturally as a direct impact on filigree paper tableaus.
Paper filigree takes root in China, from almost all the techniques of artistic expression derived and this technique is no exception. This technique uses filigree papers as a form of art that encompasses strips of paper that are wrapped in rolls creating shapes of circles, but can also be intervened and manipulated in them, creating other geometric shapes. All this creates decorative qualities. The first exhibition of paper filigree was opened in London in 1927, followed many years later in 1988 in New York and 2013 in Liverpool. In Kosovo, for the first time, in front of us this exposed technique of art/craft, was unveiled to us in Kosovo, for the first time in 2017, with elegance, finesse and charm by Mimoza Studenica.
Mimoza brings out the magic of papers wrapped in a stage, yet more advanced, entering masterfully into a whole image full of colour, erupting in countless shades from the surface of the paintbrush.
If we approach the selected images, we notice that those, in different periods of time, are divided into several conceptual entireties. Mimoza has no pretence on major global themes and let along in narrative stories defined according to poetics of Aristotle, but she breaks the rules of the game and focuses all our attention on two moments with her permanent insistence: to please our eyes with the selected images very carefully wit the variety of colours on paper and mannerisms in the presentation of the same ones. These are the root factor of a certain and motivated event. Designed within a visual framework and at the moment we see all listed one after another. Apart from exciting us visually, each separately, in our subconscious create melodies, which by each of us are perceived differently.
Pop art, mannerism, surrealism, Japanese animated manga, African masks and rhythms etc. are some feeds that are brought to us by the artist Mimoza Studenica in knitted urban stories as flouncing and as beautifully remodeled in paper filigree. Themes are easy, are not defined by emancipated narrations, but each of the gives us an idea, which we can then develop by entering into patterns specifically created for images that necessarily become part of integrity.
Likewise in music, literature and film, as in all arts in general, every society inherits a considerable number of myths and legends, which undoubtedly become wealth and legacy transmitting through the generations and this case is a viewpoint of Mimoza that does not let it impervious towards the same. In her work she brings us these figurines from everyday life, pop culture, which have now turned into urban legends. The Beatles are placed in the in the renowned image created during the sixties and further insistence of Mimoza to present them in her artistic approach, brings us an image that bears her stamp in the way The Beatles are artistically obeyed. Also Marilyn Monroe that Warhol had brought in dozens of images, hundreds of colours, Mimoza in this case restores it in the technical aspect summarised in a whole, but with hundreds of colours. Stones Mick Jagger, who never gets tired, although today in the eighth decade of life, in Mimoza’s reminiscence remains the image of that childlike face and this is done masterfully. Candice Petty, as it was a skittish icon from the eighties, the same with much aesthetic delicacy is brought as gently in characteristic pose, as it is one of those three Graces of Botticelli. Powerful and with a fiery temperament is exposed to us the face of the character from Japanese manga comics. The oval portrait of the Japanese attempts and seeks at all costs to come out from the image itself, to see reflected in pointillism paper filigree.
Today, filigree paper has been revived and is increasingly popular in all its beauty and the ability to rise further, thanks to technical possibilities that the present day allows us. Finally all these paper filigrees would be regarded by me as a detached moment and projected with finesse, like neon paper for Rock ‘n’ Roll music.
Lorik Sylejmani / Aveny
Visual artist and art critic
Prishtina, February 2017