TANJA OSTOJIĆ

“Becoming One with the Water” (2024), ink and aquarell on a single cotton bed-sheet, machine sewed text, (182 × 132 cm) stems from my close connection with the Lake Palić’s body of water, in which I swam daily during June and August ’24, despite the official warning that the water was allegedly polluted. I was in parallel researching in the city archive, preparing a workshop with a group of (peri/post)menopausal women and an exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery Subotica (SGS), The water of Lake Palić, the largest natural lake in Serbia, which used to be healing in the past, is unlike any other. Very warm, completely green and opaque. I couldn’t even see my finger touching my nose underwater even though I was wearing goggles with strength. A water sample in a glass bottle (on display in the Gallery) looked as if I washed watercolor brushes in it. This artwork, watercolor on cotton, shows an exsact shape of the Lake Palić that looks as a shape of my own body floating in it. 

This work in textile is a part of the research project Changed by Water (2024) interlacing issues of menopause, collective women knowledge and swimming practices.

Utilizing the healing power of water, I’ve set up workshops as a collective spaces to share and exchange on the often silenced and under-researched topic of menopause, and to practice swimming exercises, share food, book tips and watch movies with a circle of women in Berlin, Palić and Subotica.

In parallel, and later, with a help of thread and ink, I’ve been working on mapping out strategies to touch and change through bodies of water, and through women’s collective knowledges, embroidering those experiences onto textiles and series of drawings.