Writing
The inquiry that begins in my textile works, paintings, and installations continues through writing. In Letters From My Heart, published on Substack, I explore many of the same questions that shape my art practice through essays, reflections, and field notes.
Below is a small selection of recent essays.
Lost in Translation
It is early June 1991. I am in a small village in Istria with friends from university. Days stretch long and golden. We ride bikes through narrow roads lined with stone walls. We kiss under pine trees that leave resin on our hands. We swim in a still, cold sea that makes us gasp, laugh, and feel invincible. We are barely in our twenties, spending a week by the coast before final exams. It is an ordinary life in a country that still exists.
By the end of that month, the war in Yugoslavia will begin, and our lives will be shattered forever.
I do not know yet that I am living the last days of the life I was born into. I do not know that within weeks there will be empty shelves and endless queues, money losing value between morning and night, passports no longer opening doors. I do not know that the boys I laugh with will disappear — some leaving, some hiding, some never to return. I do not know that my identity will be reassigned to me, that I will be told who I am because of the city I was born in.
Becoming Who We Are
As I write these words, I am in Belgrade, sitting by my father’s side as he nears the end of his life. Around him, the world he believed in, one built on integrity, dignity, and collective care, is also dying. It is hard to sit with the inevitability of what is happening, to face the grief without wishing myself anywhere else.
And yet, in being here, I am reminded again what it means to stay.
To hold space for what is leaving.
To let grief open me, rather than close me.
To feel how love, quiet, steady, enduring, lives in the same room as loss.
And to learn that in the space between what has been and what will be, the most fragile, fertile threshold of all, life begins again.
This Too Is Just Rehearsal
It is early morning, and I am walking down the Philosopher’s Path—a curvy, cobbled trail along a quiet stream, tucked between some of Kyoto’s oldest temples. The air is fresh, the heat not yet awake, and apart from the occasional wanderer, there is no one around. I am still getting used to the silence here—it feels alive, charged with a unique energy, full of possibility.
Being in Japan, and especially Kyoto, is a spiritual experience like no other. Zen is not an occasional practice—it is woven into life itself. I walk deliberately slowly, listening to every beat of my heart, when I encounter Morito, a bamboo-grass boat maker. He sits on a small bench by the stream, shaping little boats with his hands.
He gives me one and asks me to release it from the bridge into the water. “If it flows, you are a lucky person—a happy life.”
The Flame of Possibilities
If I look back at my life - the big threshold moments - nothing truly meaningful ever happened according to plan. It happened because I trusted my intuition and had the courage to follow it, even when I had no clue where it would lead me. Was the journey without bumps? Without heartbreak? Absolutely not. But I can see now, from some healthy distance, how much of that hardship came from not feeling safe to show up as I truly am, translating myself for others in the hope I would be understood or accepted.
When I left corporate life, was it with a plan? A vision of becoming an artist? Not even close. I was so exhausted from carrying so much for so long - not just the job, but the grief, the loss of my younger self, the burden of single parenthood - that when I finally stepped away, it wasn’t just from a career or a life I thought I was building, but from the maps I had lived by for so many years. Where I was going, they not only didn’t work - they actively prevented me from reconnecting with my true self, from trusting my own internal compass, from learning anything new.
