Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Floor 5

Born 1983 in Brčko, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Yugoslavia)
Lives in Placitas, NM

Maja Ruznic’s paintings often combine difficult subject matter with seductive color and a sense of spirituality. Deep Calls to Deep was inspired by a childhood memory from her time in an Austrian refugee camp after fleeing the war in Bosnia. She describes the work as a depiction of feeling utterly alone and also a moment of initiation, in which her past traumas forged into her identity as an artist who would pursue painting as a form of healing.

Ruznic has said that The Past Awaiting the Present/Arrival of Drummers “looks at how multiple things can be true at the same time: birth, violence, pain, suffering, joy, and music.” She has described the horizontal format of the painting as inherently linear, implying a past, present, and future. The movements suggested by the figures’ feet—some in profile and others pointed toward the viewer—collapse these temporalities into a single symbolic image.