My practice constructs encounters in which dialogue, data, or shared rituals reveal social tension. I often begin with my own encounters with cultural products, questioning how they shape belonging and exclusion within a community. I continue this by collecting lived material, often language-based, through conversation, written word, or lived experience. This then allows for play within the project, leading to a mapping of recurring themes, contradictions, and emotional responses that help me to explore the ways in which language can make or break the borders of communication. A key focus in the making process for me is rituals within communities, providing astructure through which interaction and exchange can take place and be translated further into a spatial encounter, interactive installation, performative role, or moving image. I let the medium reveal itself through research. I am particularly interested in the ways in which research-based art can address social topics and internal borders can be negotiated within a community. I ground my projects by tying them to my Balkan roots, as a context for examining how belonging is performed, negotiated, and contested within shared cultural and emotional spaces. This allows me to take on multiple roles within my work, be it an artist, designer, or negotiator, creating scenarios and spaces of gathering for exchange, interaction, and embodied connection while exposing the conditions under which this becomes possible.

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