Lena Nikcevic
I am a visual artist from Montenegro and a naturalized French citizen. I was born in Podgorica in 1977. My childhood took place against the backdrop of the diverse and beautiful landscape of former Yugoslavia. After the fall and dissolution of my country and after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cetinje, Montenegro, I moved to France. I graduated MFA in 2003 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tours (DNSEP of ESBA-TALM Tours). In 2006 I met Annie Catelas and her husband Xavier, leader of CLEN, who allowed me to use their disused factory in Saint-Pierre-des-Corps as a workshop. There began the project of Ateliers de la Morinerie. a multidisciplinary workspace for artists and creatives, which today includes about 80 artist studios on an area of 15,000 m². My engagement in the adventure of the birth and development of this creative space and also the opportunity to work in it, meant that I stayed a long time in Touraine. In 2017, I decided to move back to Montenegro where I spent nine months in artist residency in Stari Bar to develop an exhibition with Julian Modica for the Centre for Contemporary Art in Podgorica. Since 2018 I live and work in Germany, in artist-studio, promotion of the city of Munich, Domagk Ateliers.
My work is part of numerous private collections and some public collections, including that of the City of Tours.
I am above all a painter but I also like illustration and create concept and design for architectural projects.
I use painting to express my perception of the flow of realities that come to me, to question the borders that separate these different realities. Each one of my works combines what I have experienced, seen, felt and thought. The invisible impacts the visible, the interior and the exterior world combine. It all reveals the strangeness of existence and a chaotic world that is called into question. Beings represented in my paintings look like they are searching for their place in the world or for the meaning of life. What interests me is to paint that exact moment when they exchange their thoughts and their feelings with the world that offers itself to them. I like the fact that their presence, as minuscule as it can be sometimes, fills the landscape. Their landscape, most of the time, is not an idyll, but a future.
