Marija Djakovic was born in 1983. in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She completed her BFA in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2006. She immigrated to the United States in 2019 and currently lives in Alexandria, VA. Her work has been exhibited mostly internationally. Djakovic works with a variety of media, including drawing, painting, collage and mosaics. Common themes in her work include female perspective of the archaic, unconscious archetypes and their integration in the process of healing.
Selected Exhibitions
2024 Group Exhibition, 46th “Pearl” Anniversary, Zenith Gallery, Washington, DC
2024 Group Exhibition, Il Tesoro Nascosto Di Grisignana, Town Gallery, Pula, Croatia
2023 Group Exhibition, Wonder Women, Galactic Panther Gallery, Alexandria, VA
2023 Group Exhibition, Open Pula Drawing Biennale, Gallery HDLU of Istria, Pula, Croatia
2023 Group Exhibition, Three Graces, Zenith Gallery, Washington, DC
2021 Group Exhibition, Women in the Arts, Umbrella Art Fair, Washington, DC
2020 Group Exhibition, Beyond Likeness, Rocky Neck Cultural Center, Gloucester, MA
2018 Group Exhibition, I Segni Del Corpo, Fondo Artistico Grisignana, Groznjan, Croatia
2018 Solo Exhibition, Drawings, The White Giraffe, Aarschot, Belgium
2016 Group Exhibition, Angelus Mundi, Artimundo Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
2016 Solo Exhibition, See Me, Gallery SKC, Belgrade, Serbia
2015 Solo Exhibition, Wild Animals, Branko Miljkovic Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia
2016 Group Exhibition, Traces of Red, Gallery of Cinematheque of Republic of Macedonia, Skopje, Macedonia
2013 Solo Exhibition, Woman Child, Sezoni Gallery, Plovdiv, Bulgaria
2013 Solo Exhibition, Behind the Eyes, Arosita Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria
2011 Solo Exhibition, Rules of Unconscious, Raiko Aleksiev Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria
2010 Solo Exhibition, In the Month of July, Palach Gallery, Rijeka, Croatia
2009 Solo Exhibition, Shadows, Fonticus Gallery, Groznjan, Croatia
2006 Solo Exhibition, Two Marija’s, Gallery 96, Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina
The woman in this quest , a quest for stripping everything and everyone to their bare, naked selves, takes the central stage. She is stripped of her nationality, culture, sexuality, history, religion, roles. She is freed to be her primal self. All women have that very basic, healthy womanhood in them, until when we have to live our lives of labels and roles, politics of feminism and chauvinism. That is when we start our lives of duality, smothering, acting, masquerading in roles of mothers, sluts, saints, daughters, housewives etc. I am unsure whether we are looking to hide behind these masks or protect our primal nature from others.
This woman finds her erotic partners in cats who are free to roam, swipe and hiss, who are moody and independent, the creatures of the Moon. Chickens, soft and fertile, tender and motherly. Eroticism, is steeped in ancient understanding of eros, lifegiving energy that Greeks understood, but always closely tied to thanatos - death.
Ultimately wild and untamed these women present something archaic, whether we want to think about them as Goddesses, daughters of Lilith, witches, queens, ghosts, they are stripped down to the ultimate female. Although the ultimate stripping is in a way that women look at the observer, it seems that the positions of observer and the object have completely changed, we as observers are being observed. Their eyes are almost occult, animalistic, their stare spooky and uncomfortable, almost like they belong not to the people but animals. Whether they are women or have metamorphosed with chickens, cats and fish into something else is a question.
This is a quest for honesty and discovery, can we present the female liberated from history and conventions, can we present a female that will look at us and not us it.