Tamara Stankovic began breaking boundaries since she was at school. Born in 1994 in Belgrade, Serbia, Stankovic genuinely highlights her roots in a country that, as a child, she had to experience the suffering and battles to achieve its identity.
Despite being raised in a family where her protective parents reassured values and securities, Tamara grew with a hard feeling of curiosity for humankind, an urge to find out all the actual mechanisms responsible for the choices that people made in life. The attitude of discovery and search, together with her curious eye, brought her to explore her native city right in the streets, to capture any possible hint for her to assemble the jigsaw she was looking for to untie her knots.
It took not too long for her to understand how art was a potent tool for her to reach this aim.
Since her earliest years, Tamara would draw or paint all the feelings and features she wished to explore, finding in this technique a way to deepen and understand human nature.
At school, for instance, Tamara was a kid in search of disruption of the conventional tools. Indeed, she skipped many school classes to participate in alternative ones, all creative oriented, such as theatre and dance. She was a good dancer and performer, believing how art was the right place always to find a response to human doubtings.
Her artworks, indeed, explore all feelings of human struggle and emotional language, aiming at studying the body reaction to a range of different emotions. Tamara defines her creative vision as moved by a balance of conscious versus subconscious, a trial of setting the inputs that leed to making choices and creating changes.
All the experiences while in high school led her to leave Belgrade in 2014 to deepen her art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where she lived for three years studying art and fashion design. This excursus was very important for her understanding of herself. The Academy taught her indeed how to pursue a target through discipline and study. But, differently from the majority of her classmates, she also had to work to support her education. Her young age could make her afford the lack of sleep and tight hours to distribute between study and work, while her teachers didn’t share the same opinion. Despite their critiques, she learned how her culture of being raised in a country of suffering and struggling had strengthened her skills. Tamara considers herself a child of change, born in between drastic cultural behaviors, which all gave her the possibility to enrich her adaptability in life. The Academy taught her a lot in terms of technique, and she still thanks that strict approach she had to deal with today.
Despite this, in 2017, she decided to get back to Belgrade, where she still lives and works. Tamara feels a great attachment to her country as she believes that people’s attitude is the one thing that will bring a nation to emerge and rise again.
Since she got back in Belgarde, she would finally commit to her paintings and personal works.
At the moment, Stankovic is working on a personal series using combined techniques as paper, collage, paint, and ink. For the last few years, she explored herself being in this world, through metaphors such as masks or references to fashion as a tool to study human behaviors and body language.
When asked which the main feature has changed in her works throughout the years, she says: “As time passed, I felt more inspired to set myself free from the boundaries and structure on how you make and develop art. At the moment, I’m manlily focusing on capturing gestures, using smaller drawings and illustrations. I push myself to explore on each possible level the combination of techniques.”
Inspired by Alexander McQueen’s approach to fashion without boundaries, she also considers herself a big fan of Sandro Botticelli, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, known as Witkacy, and Salvador Dali. Tamara finally finds in wild nature and raw gestures a valid tool to explore, as in that thin line between conscious and subconscious – which she considers the must place to visit when in need of inspiration.
Tamara Stankovic is currently part of st-Art Amsterdam.
