By The Bay
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Ravnikar gallery space, Ljubljana / Slovenia, 2019
Oris — House of architecture, Zagreb / Croatia, 2019
Ravnikar gallery space, Ljubljana / Slovenia, 2019
Oris — House of architecture, Zagreb / Croatia, 2019
The latest series by artist Jelena Bando is a critical reflection upon her recent stay in Vietnam. In particular, through a group of drawings and paintings, Jelena attempts to report her impressions of the most popular tourist location in Vietnam – Ha Long Bay. This place of marvelous beauty and unique presence, protected as the UNESCO World Heritage site, is located in northeast Vietnam and known for thousands of towering limestone islands topped by rainforest.
In this series, Jelena addresses the reality of participating in one of the hundreds of tours and expeditions that invade this spectacular bay on a daily basis: a profound and unexpected delicacy of the destination invaded by a suffocating number of tourist boats, barges and kayaks. The inevitable sense of disappointment is present on both ends: as a tourist in search of a promised ‘natural paradise’ but participating in a rushed and crowded visit, and as a human being responsible for the preservation of natural beauty and wealth but witnessing unsustainability and destructive impact that mass tourism has on the environment and the local community. Her personal experience ignited a myriad of questions regarding the human relationship with nature upon which she based this series. This topic has been focus of Jelena’s artistic expression for several years, but this time she approached it from a somewhat different angle.
Her works aim to deliver the very real delicacy with which entire Ha Long Bay radiates. Jelena is primarily dedicated to capturing the particular texture and fragile structure of the islands with intricacy and complexity of her strokes. Moreover, the artist uses rice paper for some of the works in order to further highlight the fragility of limestone islands in the bay. A gentle blue, green and emerald tones display the overall impression of this dense cluster of islands rising from the ocean covered in jungle vegetation. A feeling of unrest and unease is present in each piece, indicating the threat of irreversible damage that could be inflicted by constant and unlimited flocks of visitors.
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Andrea Šarić
In this series, Jelena addresses the reality of participating in one of the hundreds of tours and expeditions that invade this spectacular bay on a daily basis: a profound and unexpected delicacy of the destination invaded by a suffocating number of tourist boats, barges and kayaks. The inevitable sense of disappointment is present on both ends: as a tourist in search of a promised ‘natural paradise’ but participating in a rushed and crowded visit, and as a human being responsible for the preservation of natural beauty and wealth but witnessing unsustainability and destructive impact that mass tourism has on the environment and the local community. Her personal experience ignited a myriad of questions regarding the human relationship with nature upon which she based this series. This topic has been focus of Jelena’s artistic expression for several years, but this time she approached it from a somewhat different angle.
Her works aim to deliver the very real delicacy with which entire Ha Long Bay radiates. Jelena is primarily dedicated to capturing the particular texture and fragile structure of the islands with intricacy and complexity of her strokes. Moreover, the artist uses rice paper for some of the works in order to further highlight the fragility of limestone islands in the bay. A gentle blue, green and emerald tones display the overall impression of this dense cluster of islands rising from the ocean covered in jungle vegetation. A feeling of unrest and unease is present in each piece, indicating the threat of irreversible damage that could be inflicted by constant and unlimited flocks of visitors.
—
Andrea Šarić