TODAY THE HUMAN SOUL IS STATIC

At the "Museum of the town of Skopje", in Skopje, in the course of this month is the second individual exhibition of the painter Jasminka Novkovska, titled as "Era". Novkovska in 1998 finished the Academy of Fine Art in Skopje,  within the class of Dusan Percinkov, in  1999-2000, she specialized fine art, at the National Academy of Fine Art, in Sofia, where in June this year she realized her first exhibition  at the Museum  of "the Earth and the men"  in Sofia.

QUESTION: In what technique you paint your works?

NOVKOVSKA:- I work mostly in acrylic technique, which acts very contemporary corresponding to my way of expression in particular, because I use clear and clean forms. I frequently combine, some materials, acrylic pastes and oil, in order the painting can act differently having the difference in the structure. I also use  a text on my paintings acting frequently as a street poster, loosing its frames......

QUESTION: I am noticing that your motives are referred with the literature, the movie, the theater, known urban myths such as Merlin Monroe and Elvis, for example.

NOVKOVSKA: - Yes, I paint that we see in our everyday living, advertisements, movies, music, human bodies, fashion. I draw down the inspiration from the living, the human being is my  inspiration, his development, psyche, soul, life and death, love ...........

QUESTION: I am noticing on your canvases the faces from the Skopje living.

NOVKOVSKA: Yes, I frequently paint the taverns atmosphere, including the graphites in the context of the painting, because we, as we visually exist, in such way we speak, but it appears to me whether we understand each other! I would like to refer to the "Babylon tower" painting. We all know the story for the people that liked to construct the tower in order to rich the God, and the God surprised by their stupidity has confused their languages, what really happens in our day-to-day living-we cannot understand each other, neither in a literal nor in a spiritual sense.  The tower has no base due to which it floats and quickens. The story is full with symbols related to the misunderstanding and alienating of the human being.  Today, everyone is a story for himself. I can think only that everybody understands me but it appears that we speak in different languages.

I use the Bible as well,  as a source in order to make comparisons with today's living. On my canvase, which notify the sin made by Adam and Eva, upside down bodies symbolizing our depressed wills and insticts, but there area also masks that symbolise hypocrisy. I am inspired by the spots of Madonna on which there is a great deal of symbolisms, the lady transfers into the raven, as an example. I think that Madonna does have an extraordinary visual communication with the public.

QUESTION: On one of your canvases, it says "Shopping and Fucking" painted both,  "ecstasies" and love stories together.

NOVKOVSKA: I think  in what way we live in everyday life is "Shopping and Facking", while use of drugs is in a fashion. There is frequently an ironic expression on my canvases, of such states, such as the canvas of the "Contemporary Adam and Eva" towards what I oppose the massage of the New Testament,  for the love. The text on the canvases has been used before as well. You can see it on Kishlovki's canvas in "three blue colors- selected here for the needs of my painting. In spite of the fact  that the Bible tells us something else, it appears to me that of the man has left an instict only, while of a women, a puppet left, today. The "contemporary Eva" is presented today by the "cats" or the silicon women which we see on the spots, the  kitsch and the glamour. The wreaths placed over the head of these men symbolize the life and death, the one over the man is transferred into the snake, and the other over the ladies' head is romantic. The red color on the canvas behind is a symbol as well.

QUESTION: You always on your paintings add a text.

NOVKOVSKA:  Yes, as we misunderstand each other,  both visually and colloquially, I feel a need to explain additionally some of my works. For example, the painting  dedicated to the movie ddirected by  Hitchcock the "Psycho", which shows the violence becaming an everyday appearance and we accept it as natural. I analyze the man's fear, showing both, the tyrant and the sacrifice. The words of Hitchcock, however, which I placed on this canvas, explain the complexity of the human being's  soul shown in his movies. He says, we already begin to live  in a "sin" from our birth, a Jesuit dogma, which has influenced a great deal of this great creative movie director. He thinks that the violence occurs as an existing conflict between the order and the chaos. We, people, very frequently "catch" ourselves as we are in a "little movies". I don't know how much we live the real life today, or we live definately in illusion or imagination. My irony is, the woman which leaves for the vacation, she definitely goes to death. I asked myself, how much the human being can be peaceful today.

QUESTION: I suppose that you are a very emotive person and that you frequently paint on your canvases that hurts you personally.

NOVKOVSKA: Certainly, for example "Qasimodo" describes the spiritual ugliness of the human being, double moral of the church and the hypocrisy of the human beings as a whole. The human being's soul is in a static state, as if it has been stopped and died, as the result of which the spiritual communication among the people is lost. We live day-to-day life, to survive  only, the human being looks lost in time.  I don't know if he thinks at all, where he goes!

I am inspired by an eternal child in ourselves. No mother of the oldness, we remain the children in our souls more or less. There is different degree of infantility only. This  is mostly referred to the authority, how much our fathers or the mothers depressed us or how much we make efforts to conquer it in ourselfs. The human being, even in his old years returns to his purest, the  childhood, and likes to detain it.

QUESTION: How much these works differ in comparison to the works in your beginning as a painter.

NOVKOVSKA:- this is a radical step in comparison to that I worked at the Academy, when I was strongly influenced by Van Goug. He is particularly an expressive personality. There is also a strong expression on my canvases. Van Goug has also brought the symbolism. Certainly, I can not remain in that phase, just because I am Jasmina, and I must overpass  Van Cough, in both ways, spiritually and  expressively. The inspiration and influence must exist, but the painter must be an individualist, he has to have his own individual language how the public could accept him.

QUESTION: Do you already feel the need to change something in your painting, to move forward.

NOVKOVSKA: Sure I think now  for my next works. I like to search, to "dig" in the human being's soul, to search what soul has hiden deep inside, because for me, the human being, its subconcioussnes, complexity, pressed wills and influences are something undiscovered.  I pay a particular attention in the analyses of the authority of  both, the father and the mother, because the roots of it lay there. When you will uncover it you should not idolize them, you shall see yourself as an individual then. However, it is difficult to do it, you should be bravely-honest both, with them and yourself, but the people frequently like to live in the lie, it makes them happy. This idea is expressed on the painting of "Pinocchio", until you live in lie, you manipulate yourself only or you manipulate somebody else. The lie on my painting is the main theme, and has the roots, while the worry  of the  conscience is neglected, it doesn't exist anymore today and it is "death", can be said.

QUESTION: Can you compare the present art scene, the creation of the young painters in Macedonia in comparison to the one in Sofia.

NOVKOVSKA: My work is radical in comparison to the work at The National Academy of Fine Art in Sofia. The Natiomnal Academy of Fine Art celebrated 105 anniversary and it gives to the students a fundamental knowledge. The work at the Academy is very professional and you can be trained drawing there, but your own way of expression should be found by yourself. I have been following my own way, I search that what I am interested  in and I think what I have done is only a good beginning which will help me inr my further development.

On the other side, I think that young Macedonian artists should spiritually work on its own creation in order to find its own authentic language  of expression, because there are different influences. However, we live in a present time, and many things have been explained, so it would not be good for the people to fill with smoke and lie themselves. If a painter, however, doesn't carry a creative energy or there is nothing to say, he should not pose on a show.

                                                                        Interviewed by Ana-Maria Brangolica