E V A P E T R I Č
PHOTOGRAPHY
IN RESCUE MISSION
the artist imposes over the satellite images of tender zones on Earth, her sculptural object of the Earth, its oceans composed of countless shadow silhouettes from her series Gr@y Matter – Language of Shadows. These shadows—traces of human presence—form an intricate, living skin over the planet, where our brightest and our darkest aspects intertwine. Its surface is bound with a bandage, a universal symbolj of care, healing and hope – warnng us that it is in urgent need of healing,.
What do we see?
We see: God, devils, harm, killing fields…
We see: Love, war, light, chaos, revolt…
We see: Blood, men, few friends…
Through this layered cartography of shadows, the work becomes a mirror to our collective human condition—its beauty, its brutality, its contradictions. And quietly, it asks: Do we also see forgiveness?
HOLES IN LIGHT
A poetic mapping of humanity’s shadow imprint on Earth, urging balance between people and our planet.
In Holes in Light, Eva Petrič combines data on various human activities on Earth with satellite imagery, gathered through her participation in the ArtEO.earth program and her collaboration with the Slovenian satellite NEMO HD (Space.si). These are superimposed with human silhouettes from her analog series Gr@y Matter – Language of Shadows, revealing the human trace—the so-called shadow imprint of our presence on the planet.
The work acknowledges both intentional and unintentional, conscious and unconscious traces we leave behind and emit through our presence on the planet. The shadow motif serves as a common denominator to express human presence, human traces, and human potential.
Satellite images depicting so-called "Earth’s tender zones" form the background over which Petrič exposes our collective human imprint.
This cycle is both a poetic apology to nature and a call for reflection, dialogue, and action to sustain balance between humans and our planet.
BLACK & WHITE
Gr@y Matter – Language of Shadows, photography series
In my project Gr@y Matter – Language of Shadows I explore the communication abilities of shadows in representing emotions and being building blocks of emotions. I borrowed the periodic table of elements from the natural sciences and created the periodic table of shadowed emotions, visualized with my »shadow« photographs.
Shadows and emotions have both a lot in common: we all have them, acknowledging this or not… and regardless of our culture, gender, social position, education… Both shadows and emotions are odorless, tasteless, non-touchable – are thus immaterial, yet they are ever present, and they accompany us always in all-ways. Both are thus a kind of equalizer, denoting that we belong as well to a community of shadows…
My periodic table of shadowed emotions is contained in my book of the artist: »Gr@y matter – Language of shadows« of 1.215 pages creating a conceptual work of this body of thought. For this project I received the prestigious Swiss Grant Vordemberge Gildewart Award in 2010.
COLOR
An Echo … A Stain
The light catches the figure, the figure catches my eyes, my eyes catch its shadow, and the shadow sneaks into my camera only to explode in the dark room. The shadow becomes the figure and the figure becomes the shadow of the shadow. The shadow of the shadow catches my eyes, my eyes catch the light, and the light catches the figure in motion, leaving behind a trail of shadows.... At other times colors hide the shadow and expose the figure and sometimes the figure and the shadow join back together to tell a story.
For me, my work is about telling a story, exposing the defined and the undefined, the obvious and the hidden, the figure and its shadow. I use the light inside the dark room to free the shadow from its figure, and I use pink, blue, green, yellow and orange in the light outside the dark room to free the figure from its shadow. No longer in a war of tug and pull, each is granted a life of its own. In their own space on the wall, they wait for me to join them back together, a story they offer in return.
VISUAL APHORISMS
Shadows&Puppets
Shadows&Puppets – visual aphorisms - a series of staged photographs resulting from performance like rituals in various environments, which are aiming at overriding the overall present clichés and are reaching to emotions buried underneath.
Nowadays emotions are more or less replaced by easily attainable clichés, instantly expressed visually with color photographs. By accentuating them and at the same time counteracting them with echoes of clichés in the form of black and white shadows, my aim was to create visual aphorisms - to overturn the cliché and with a black and white shadow functioning as a catalyst induce, or better said; re-induce in viewers a real emotion.
As catalysts I use series of shadows from my book Gr@y matter - the language of shadows. The main protagonist of my color staged photographs is a puppet, unaware of its shadow - the real emotion which pulls the strings of the protagonist making it a puppet.