Marina Ćorić , a name our regulars may recognize. Three years ago Marina’s photography kicked off our third year (ISSUE13: Blondie, Marina’s first LO profile). Since then we’ve been watching her updates. We couldn’t stay away–and we’ve brought her back to be featured in another issue of LO.
Based in Croatia, Marina’s practice spans photography, painting, and illustration. This issue features all three media. A unifying characteristic behind her approach regardless of media is the ability to look deeper into ordinary moments and touch the surreal. Many of Marina’s artworks in this issue are examinations of the self. One series of her photography takes place in a bedroom, the subject’s head and torso hidden under a pile of sheets, the limbs askew in such a way as to invite the viewer to look so hard at the way the subject’s limbs rest on the bed and contrast with the neatly made bedspread and sterile walls–look long enough and the viewer will begin to feel a tingling in their own limbs. Another piece, a painting, shows the subject looking directly at the viewer with peering eyes–looking down and towering above the viewer like a giant–the contours of the face and bend of the arms distorting just enough with the perspective to fill the viewer with a sense of unease and the unnatural. An illustration–an overhead view of a woman in a kitchen–the lines of the walls and furniture bending inwards subtly, almost imperceptibly, give a voyeuristic sense to the loneliness of the scene.
These three pieces capture one of Marina’s most unique talents–her ability to evoke emotion: danger, fear, shame out of the seemingly mundane. After all, all three of these images highlighted take place in an apartment. This ability to reflect the normalcy of our environments back at us in such a way as to make them feel alien is a precious gift, made even more precious as our daily lives technolyze in such as way that taking time away from an LED screen and fulling living in our environment has now become something the best of us must set aside time in our lives for, and the worst of us don’t even realize we’re missing it.
Before you read, go off and set time aside to stare at your kitchen in a new way. However, be sure to head on over to Marina’s social media and give her page a like! You can find her work on Facebook, Instagram, and on her own website, located here. You can also view much more of her excellent work at these locations. Please also look below to check out the three photos mentioned above, as well as all the photos used in this issue (#32) of Literary Orphans Journal.
