From intimate to public

A Serbian national, Jasna Topolski, was 26 years old with a promising art career when she retreated from society and entered the Christian-orthodox convent of Gradac in 1992, becoming Mother Efimija and 4 years later Reverend Mother Superior. Alongside her duties as a nun, she pursued her art, looking into contemporary ways of expressing traditional iconography. Instead of stern looking saints with heavy, dark circles under their eyes and hollow cheeks, displayed on paintings with ornate golden frames, Efimija envisioned amicable pain and joyfulness. In 2016 she left Gradac and moved to the Uchon Monastery in Burgundy, France.

The exhibition in Basel is a great opportunity to see some of her most powerful artworks for the first time. Artworks will be exhibited in retail display windows as part of the open, public space.

The obvious contrast between “intimate” and “open” is interconnected. The emotional artwork touches everyone who stops and looks at them. Just like Romanesque sculptures, the drawings express archaic and existential feelings in their direct, simple, childlike and emotional intensive imagery.

In the heart of it lies a life of creative controversy, the space between the internal and external, and above all, the “inbetweenness”. There is the pain of loneliness (image1), the yearning for relationships within enclosed structures (image 3), and for shelter and safety (image 5). The contrast is always there, thus the outer world without the structure and the exhilarating feeling of freedom can initiate new experiences (image 6). However, there is a danger of feeling exposed and lost (image 2) without these safe places. The animals depicted in her drawings are carriers of different emotional situations. This does not mean that Efimija Topolski humanizes the sheep, dogs, horses, crocodiles, fish or any other animals depicted in her artwork, instead they serve as a juxtaposition of our own feelings. For Topolski, the animals and nature with its plants and flowers represent all that is alive, including humans, with whom she shares her sensitivity. The animals, as well as humans, feel alone and exposed without their own counterpart, and they also experience joy and curiosity during the contact. Some of the drawings are almost abstract (image 4) and they share the expression of feelings in different situations.