Riding Small World & Dinner with Sunci, project

The priority of my little artist stipend was the tube pass and a phone, which is why I ate only pasta at home—electricity could not fit into my stipend, and it was the last on the list of priorities. Those Notting Hill houses had this electricity top-up system—you topped electricity up like a phone. I had let mine run out. In fact, I would plug in my electricity in the hallway, in the socket meant for hoovering the staircase.

And it was at this time of humble living, in between the realms of India Jane’s shop, glamorous art events, brunches and dinners Marina and Tarrek’s place, and very little time in my own dark place, that I suddenly had an idea.

I believe we "land ideas" or "channel ideas"—ideas just come to you. And all you need to do is realize them or not—and if you don’t do it, they fly away, and somehow it’s never the right time for it ever again. Usually the idea requires courage , and jumping and risking and investing energy and money, but if you do it- it rewards you. Sometime its too scary to jump though.

The incredible, genius idea—that landed to the very broke Sunci, without a pound in her pocket until the end-of-month paycheck— was almost biblical.

My concept was to paint portraits of artists and art scene people over dinner that I would make and invite them to.

Though Marina pointed out how slim and beautiful I looked, I felt always hungry that summer. So, to make dinner and paint others at dessert was my plan.

And the people who wanted to have this experience with me but were not in any way involved with art—they would pay for the experience and keep their portrait, and in this way, they would fund the project and the growing collection of the art scene people’s portraits -that I planned to exhibit some day.

It sounds complicated—but it was brilliant.

I suddenly had a project to offer to whomever I felt like. To people we met at the fancy art parties, I offered to be my muses for the project—be it art journalists, artists, architects, gallerists. To people who had money and loved art, I offered to be patrons for the project—London bankers.

I had become a member of the then-private social group, Small World. To enter this community, you had to be invited. It was a kind of Facebook, limited to jet-setters & socialites. It still exists. Maybe there was something about being in a house with no electricity that sped up my genius or made the angels feel sorry for me and send me the concept.

For while in Rome in the previous two years, I had sustained myself from art and got used to the fact that I could. In London, I was brand new in terms of collectors. No one knew me. I had to get myself on the map quickly so that I could live for my work. And this project did just that.

The main sources for the muses I painted were face-to-face encounters at the art events and Small World. Very quickly, the word got out about my project among the London City bankers. Many wanted to have this experience. They had a bet on who would succeed in seducing me—none of them did.

I was right in the middle of a completely bodyless, romantic email correspondence with an artist in Berlin that kept me infatuated and freed my body and time to work and dedicate myself fully to being a born-again Londoner.

Very soon, "Dinner with Sunci" took off. I was painting sometimes two people a day. I had money to move house and moved to the Barbican with three fun flatmates, where "Dinner with Sunci" blossomed and was cooked for many nights, feeding everyone in the flat. The dinners became social events at times.

Soon, people on the London art scene knew me—I was painting so many of them—and the art collectors knew me—enough to make it possible to leave the shop job before the month was up.

I was being invited to Ibiza, Paris, and Istanbul, and I no longer cared about India Jane—for I had money and was back to being independent with ART.

The space in Portman Square I had wanted to book—and trusted in magic that somehow I would—was paid for by a London gallerist who just wanted to help me out and sponsor the project after I painted her over lunch.

Andy Warhol & Mick Jagger

It was a dreary summer in London in terms of weather. Rain, rain, rain. The kind of weather that makes one desire the diet of fatty sausages and mash—but I was too poor.

All I ate those days was pasta Aglio & Olio—the basic Roman recipe, a staple of the working-class Roman, consisting of plain pasta with fried garlic in olive oil with pepper—my staple too for a whole month, except when Marina took me out.

In this particular reincarnation of the artist, my friends—who at that point were curator Marina, artist Tatiana & architect Guillermo—decided to evacuate me out of Croatia as an emergency.

I had just quit working for the Slovenian yacht-building industry, spent my entire last wages in Venice for the Biennale opening, gave some to my family, on lodging, food, high heels for the openings—and the trip via ship and train to Croatia.

My stepfather died at the end of winter. My mother was in a terrible state, grieving in the most volatile way and spewing it all over me and my brothers. It was very toxic, to live with her unbearable. The moment she saw me back in Croatia—on her own initiative—she secured me a job: to be the cleaner for apartments on the island of Hvar.

Now, to explain something—I have a very sharp eye for aesthetics; however, I am the messiest whirlwind of a human and tend to create mess so fast, I am the one that has always needed a cleaner. Tatiana was with me when this job was offered to me by my mother.

Tatiana, on witnessing this in secret, immediately started the "Extract Sunci" mission, which my beloved London friends financed together. They had always believed in me as an artist—even when I doubted it. Tati gave me the choice: fly out tomorrow, risk it as an artist again in London this summer, or stay in beautiful seaside Croatia and become a cleaner.

I chose art. Pissed mother off again, for she likes me being nearby. Marina gave me a flat to use in her own Notting Hill neighborhood and a small weekly allowance for the month—until I found my bearings. The idea was I get a job—fast. And the way Marina presented this to me was that she was investing in me—the artist and my art.

I spent a day working at the Yotam Ottolenghi restaurant—and lost the job the same day for explaining to a customer and my manager, in front of the customer, that "Pecorino was a sheep's cheese because, in Italian, 'pecora' is a sheep"—not goat cheese, as the manager had said.

The third job was at India Jane—a shop full of beautiful lamps, pillows, glass, both beautiful or kitsch, and fake antique furniture from India and China. My days were spent dusting shelves and rearranging glasses, fluffing cushions, and by the time the end of the workday came, Marina and Tarrek had a society event planned out for us—or a few. Be it gate-crashing Sotheby’s auction exhibitions through daredevil acting at the door—or any kind of art exhibition openings anywhere across London.

One day, we ended up at an exhibition in a beautiful decadent period building on Portman Square. A Russian artist was showing her photographs. At the exhibition, we somehow got invited to the afterparty.

Arriving in a beautiful house, we soon learned that the house belonged to the manager of the Rolling Stones.

The house was full of art and white rugs. In this house, red wine was not allowed because of the white rugs—to my annoyance. And what kind of rock and roll is that? But it was the wife of this man who hosted us to start.

When we entered the living room, there were only a few people invited—Marina, Tarrek, myself, and perhaps four or five others. On the walls of the living room hung original Andy Warhol prints.

Not only were they original Andy Warhols, but the very specific one—a light blue and black portrait of Mick Jagger—that I had discovered in Ms. Judi’s art book, and that inspired me to paint portraits of beautiful boys, because through that work I understood portraits can be sexy—not just Tudor-like.

I realized that this must be a sign! The kind of signs I fish about as an omen. This was a good omen—that I translated as meaning the month freezing in the gray city full of drizzle was the right universal choice for me. I was so happy.

And then a man walked into the living room and sat under that very portrait of Mick Jagger.

It was Mick Jagger himself.

Mick Jagger told me that Portman Place was the place where the orgies were held. We were chatting quietly and eating chocolate cake by the dessert table. All the other guests at this little party clearly considered it would be condescending if they actually shared the excitement of meeting Mick Jagger, so they were playing it cool and aloof—all eyes from their corners following the dialogue between me and Mick.

I had none of that insecurity or snobbery to the point where I would ignore such an artist. I will always go up to an artist and say something,  I was not shy, and we got chatting.

Jagger told me all about the orgies at Portman Place, and it made me decide right then and there that, by Jove, I would have to do something there too. I loved the space.

The moment I departed into the next room, all the other people suddenly swamped Jagger—no more snobs. I left him to it.

The omen did foretell good tidings. Before the month at India Jane was up, I had a brilliant idea- and was back to living of my art. 

And the next day I went to Portman Place and met Frankie, who ran it. Frankie liked me, and he was Serbian—in London, this meant we were both Balkan, and it meant a discount. Frankie would rent Portman Place to me—for one day—for 1,000 quid. 

The third Buddhist Monk & painting a darling war criminal.

While I was a child, I spent four years living through a war. This war affected people in different ways, some less, some more.

To me, it meant that from the first rocket we saw in the sky over our city—not only had a war begun—but that my father, living in America, and who had long planned to get me, mother, and brother over to America so that we could share in his American dream, completely abandoned us.

My dad stopped calling, writing, and sending money, and it was war. I was living with my mother and baby brother in the tiny stone house , and one I most ever felt and thought of as home. It was an interesting time to stop supporting a woman with two of your children, and one a breast-suckling baby, and I’m not sure what kinds of self-preservation, selfishness, and fear made him. Maybe he was scared he, a musician, might be drafted into war if he could be traced? No idea.

From the house we lived in, overlooking the sea, you could see very well the red rockets being shot at from the "Yugoslav," or rather Serbian owned ships that were shooting at Split. They sort of looked like red broken lights in red bows, crisscrossing over the night sky. Seeing these lights put such an intense fear into my tiny little frame—I was petrified of actually being in the house and of us being alone. I felt profound panic, fear, and the need to be around other people.

The red light attack had a worse effect on my grandfather. My grandfather during one part of his life was the electronics director in the ship yard of Trogir. He had worked on building warship called Split for the than yugolav state and army. He was the one who oversaw the installation and design of electricity in this warship.  It was a war ship called Split that was used to bomb the city of Split. It was Split the ship, that was bombing Split form the sea. The only time ever- i saw my grandfather cry was when he told my mother this. 

The makeshift war shelter that my neighborhood came up with was the cellar of an old stone building, a once-aristocratic Lippeo mansion, now an apartment building, where the cellar served as storage space for a shop. The air of this space was so full of baking flour that, upon entering it the first night, I had a series of panic attacks because I thought I could not breathe inside. 

I eventually got used to the air within, or it was swept enough times by the panicking women, and this shelter, this one large room, became a kind of a makeshift home for many months and nights during the next years.

The neighbors brought over mattresses from their own beds and made makeshift benches along the wall, and upon these mattresses slept all the children of the neighborhood, all the old women, all the mothers, and some old men—as the healthy men, young and fathers, were soon drafted to war.

I remember when I found it hard to sleep as we listened to Kalashnikovs firing in the dark, our one window stuffed with sand, blocking all light, and to stop any bullets. The shelter was only ever lit by a small candle in the night, so as to not make lights, and the very glass was covered with brown packing tape in many layers. Most people would sleep, but I remember finding it impossible for many nights as I listened to the sounds from outside.

My mother had an idea at some point that we tie the dog we were looking after, the beautiful Lassie, and the black terrifying dog of the local drug dealer around the shelter, so they’d warn us if the enemy was nearing—but the dogs ended up untying and fighting in the night.

We knew all about the sirens. And hid when sirens were sounded. And left the shelter when they seemed to let us. We were in our little sea town, exposed to the enemy from the air, from the sea, and from the lands—the enemy air force—as Croats at the beginning of the war were without any airplanes, any tanks, and any weapons that the "Yugoslav" army, mostly commanded by Serbs, used to crush the attempt at independence by the countries wanting to leave the six-country Yugoslav union.

I kept hearing things at the back of our building where there was a toilet and a window, and I was scared, they just thought i was a kid over doing it-. One night a bunch of Croatian army soldiers came over to us. They told us that behind us, 10 meters behind us, in the park, in what was a tourist camp—Serbian soldiers were camping. The soldiers had made them depart. It probably is impossible for you to know what the enemy camping behind a building full of women and children might mean—unless you saw the news reports from that war, reporting on the instances where they made it into such buildings and after which no one was left alive.

The soldiers saved us. My mother fell in love with one of the soldiers, as did all the women. But by this time, my mother was clearly single, very beautiful, and suddenly the handsome soldier made my mom my second brother and engaged with her, but was not really around, was always on the front.

My aunt was a politician and buisness woman at the time, and she was in the negotiation with the Serb army to leave our region, though I don’t know the details. Not much was destroyed -as was in the north of Croatia. My aunt also got my mother a job working for the UN, who were sleeping in her hotel. And my mother in turn employed everyone who she knew needed a job—in the UN.

However, the British engineer that was my mother’s boss was completely besotted with her. Lurked and stalked, courted her in such a public way, that the soldier, eventually scared he would lose his son to this foreigner, kidnapped my brother from his nanny as my mother was at work and I at school. My 1.8-year-old baby, breastfeeding brother ended up somewhere in war-thick Bosnia, in the care of an unknown woman. My mother was out of her wits at this point for a couple of months, and then the brother of her fiancé stole the baby from the Bosnian woman and returned it to my mother, who was being driven around by her boss.

This made the soldier so mad, he hunted us. This was a soldier who in his warm war stories told me he had not eaten for 14 days and faced an enemy squadron alone. He banged at the door of my grandparents and told my grandmother he would slaughter me, my brother, my mother, and take his baby son back.

My grandparents had friends in the most northern part of Croatia, Stubice, in a village in the countryside where no one knew us. These good people took us into their house in the woods and hid us for the summer. In autumn, we moved to Zagreb, my mother cut off all my long hair so anyone looking for me would not recognize me.

There my mother married her boss from the UN, who was expelled from the United Nations forces for his illegitimate intervention with this soldier and Croatian army forces, and losing all his property to his ex-wife in Britain.

I can’t say I was happy. I can’t say I felt safe. I was groundless. All I had that I could control was drawing.

We moved to England. Eventually, I figured it out. Learned the language. I was not allowed to call or write to my friends in case the soldier found out where we lived, in case he came to look for us, we continued hiding. I was not allowed to visit—even when the war had ended. We did not return home when the war ended.

England became this period that turned into a life. We lived in one and then a second village. I fought my mother and stepfather to stay at the school I had by chance managed to accidentally make—King Edward VI—because we lived in a village that fell into its region, and once we moved to another, which had no bus to my school town, I fought to stay at my school by choosing to cycle on the bike—to school every day if needs, and it did need it—the many miles in whatever the English weather.

For a while, I also accompanied my younger brother—but he soon gave up the trouble and resigned to go to the school with the bus.Where fewer people went on to complete A-levels or university than the school I had, by chance, stuck with.

In the big art book in Ms. Judi's class, I once came across the performance Balkan Baroque by Marina Abramović.

The piece moved me deeply, for it seemed to express the feelings I could not describe about this war I had lived through. The artist was Serbian, though.

For me, as a small Croat, the world was so simple. We were Croat, the Serbs were our enemy, trying to kill us in our own backyard—we were Catholics, there was one God in the universe. Things started shifting in England, where I discovered so many other cultures that were nothing like the one I had come from. Where I eventually started to see there are many sides to everything, and the idea of one universal truth I had felt so strongly I had known—disappeared.

The fact I loved her work, the fact she was Serbian, was probably divine intervention, because I had to get beyond my developed prejudices to value the work. The work moved me profoundly. 

---

And I instantly felt intrigued and connected to this woman and her performances.

In England, in the environment I was growing up in—Lichfield and the village of Elford—I had no contact whatsoever with anyone from the Balkans or who spoke my language for years. In fact, Marina was the first Balkan person I had, in this way, had contact with—via her work. It was also the first art performance work I had ever discovered. It invited me into the language of art performance.

Part 2

"Shall I come to Belgrade this week?"

"My children are on the island with their father, I sold a painting and have money right now—I don’t always." I was talking to the writer-curator who had invited me to come exhibit in Belgrade having discovered my work trough the press.

She had other plans, but in the impulsive euphoria that takes one over when inspiration is at hand, she caught on to it. Changed her plans and told me to come over. She had invited me to do a solo exhibition in the heart of Belgrade a year ago, but it had never quite been the right time, as her health was the issue.

I had just returned from my first trip to London with my children, who were to leave and spend a week with their dad on the island. My boyfriend was on the sailing boat he worked on that summer. And I had invited over Florian Richter from the art group Glitin to stay in my sea castle house—because it was so bizarre and inspiring, it called for artists to live in it. More than anything, leaving my children to their dad like this always put into me a sense of terrifying vacuum I could not live with. I needed an adventure so the terrifying loneliness of having to be without my children by force wouldn’t crush me.

I was arranged. I met up with the fantastical, marvelous Florian and his wife, left them my keys to the house in the sea, and got onto a coach for Belgrade.

Some 12 hours later, I was in Serbia. It was my first time. I had no idea what to expect. I had no preconceptions. And I had long ago renounced the enmity I had felt as a threatened child some 30 years before. I was just curious to see and explore, as I am whenever I land in any new place. I bought the lady champagne on the way.

The curator kindly came to pick me up at the coach station, and we took a bus to her house. She told me all about the different buildings, parks, kinds of sculptures, embassies as we drove through Belgrade.

At home, I met her husband—both in their 60s, and both as kind and funny as could be.

I was fascinated by their banter, their exchange. This curator, devoutly loved by her husband, who seemed to cook and look after every need of hers in the most devoted way. His wife, who had seriously compromised health. She spoke with humor, drama, and both educated, delicious words and crude swear words all mixed into one effectful blend.

Their house gave me a sense of déjà vu. They had pretty much the same bathroom, with the same tiles as my grandmother’s. They had the same orange light shades as my grandmother. And the apartment was decorated with the furniture made in Yugoslavia, which my grandmother had—but it seemed everyone in the Balkans had the same. It appeared to me that across Yugoslavia, everyone had the same furniture—which was very strange for me.

Apart from this, their house was chock-a-block filled with books and art.

For the next three days, the curator lady and her husband treated me like a daughter. He cooked vegetarian recipes for me from the Yugoslav Army Cookbook—the only one he ever used—and they were delicious. She took me to see a historical museum so I would understand more about Serbia, so I would see how long ago Serbia had started- and its cultural wealth. So we started with the mammoth bones and cavemen.

We saw the fine art collections, which were beautiful and inspiring. She took me for cake in the most theatrical, charming restaurant—deliciously exotic. She told me all about everything she possibly could, walking around in her body, always needing insulin, and with a weak heart with several stents. I felt guilty for accepting the company not wishing to endanger her. I was never alone, and she paid for everything we did. I was blown over by the couple's hospitality.

The curator also took me to see a large fortress, a part of Belgrade that I found most architecturally impressive. Two churches stand on the top of this fortress hill, very important to the nation. One within it has a holy well that brings healing to the worshipers. The second church, to my fascination, had chandeliers entirely made out of full, unexploded bullets.

This artillery-filled church made me think about the fact that maybe Serbs are a warrior nation. I had never thought about it like this. 

As we were leaving the churches, I saw—standing upon the tight bridge we had to walk across—a Tibetan Buddhist monk dressed in orange! I smiled and considered him, too, a divine blessing. I asked the curator and him to take a photo with me—my third Buddhist monk encounter. I thought—this exhibition to come must be blessed.

Excitement filled me to be planning an exhibition in the town Marina Abramović was from, because I had, over the years, learned more about her art and life and was always inspired. The lady herself also knew Abramović, having interviewed her during her large solo show in the Contemporary Art Museum in Belgrade.

The  curator lady had opened a cultural center - in the middle of Belgrade—where she promoted Croatian culture. She had such influence and will that it was the President of Serbia she had convinced to give her the space and sponsor the idea.

The curator—like myself—was originally from the little seaside town of Kastela. She had such a fierce love for Kastela that it was this that made her invite me to exhibit in Belgrade. She adored Kastela and suffered for them profoundly. She had a little house in Kastela and would go there alone often, without her husband. Seeing she was so sick, I found this unusual.

We talked about my show, what I would paint, how I would bring over the works, what we would exhibit. She went so far as to introduce me to other gallerists and galleries in Belgrade to open doors for me, so once I exhibited there, I could do it in grand style—something she would launch in the press- a journalist as well as a writer and curator, she was well-respected in the social and diplomatic circles of Serbia.

On the last day of my stay, I insisted I paint the couple who were so incredibly kind to me and whom I came to love profoundly and instantly. I painted her reading her published poetry to me in her study, where I had been hosted. She turned out beautiful. I captured her strong and resilient, and through the poetry, I got to know her depths. I found out all about her heart operations, her vulnerability, and her passion.

Second, I painted her husband. He kept mentioning how he missed the sea, and this intrigued me, as they had a house near the sea. But then, this so-far harmless-looking man suddenly said, "I can't go—I can't leave the country, I can't cross the border." I was still confused. I didn't get the problem—the man was healthy. I asked the general questions that I always do about life.

"How did you two meet?"
"At a dance in Croatia, fell in love, and had the daughters."
"What was your job before retirement?"
"Oh, I was in the navy, in the engine."

And I don’t remember the actual words, but he then conveyed to me that he was in the Yugoslav army ship called Split, the one that had bombed the city of Split. He was running its engine at the time.

I had no idea what I was going to stumble upon when I started painting him, and I certainly did not expect this in the least. I suddenly realized that he must be on a list as a war criminal—and that's why he could not leave the country. My heart started beating, I started to get all hot, but this man here had been the kindest, nicest man towards me in the last few days. So I took in a breath, dealt with my triggers, and chose in that moment to forgive  all, and hear it.

"Those deserting the army were shot," he explained.
"And then my wife had to leave Split. She was living in Split, because she and our children were suddenly in danger—because I was in the army. They were in danger in Split."

I had pieced the story together from painting them. She, a Croat, married to a Serbian naval engine commander, fled Split and was afraid to return to Croatia for years. On the other hand, in Belgrade, she had been treated well from the start and was given very comfortable housing by the state to accommodate her large family and her husband's army seniority.

I carried on painting. I remembered my grandfather. He was the one who built this ship, called Split, that bombed Split. Here was the man operating the Split ship—during the bombing of Split. That I saw for a few moments from Kastela as a child. And she, a Croat, had to flee the same city of Split, with her children, to be safe from Croats.

It was a little too much for me. 

But I carried on painting. I was here for peace. To make art. To share peace, to share friendship. And perhaps, due to Instagram, and media, and the people who follow me locally—I can inspire a new chapter for those who have not been able to get past the war of their youth.

We also got on to the subject of history. This was the most potentially volatile. The lovely old gentleman heard, listened, and then started telling me about a picture of history that was alien to me. About the stupidity and unreasonableness of these little parts of the country wanting to split up from the large. I understood that he seemed to think everything was a large Serbia. Even Croatia. He did not see it as being a separate nation. He did not take into account " to me obvious" "entire history"—which I had studied in Croatia  having been a tourist guide, and in England while growing up. My body started getting hot as I felt the only way to get out of this conversation as friends was to stop it. So I changed the course of the conversation and got away from the scary disinformation/propaganda/ideals territory that started these kinds of wars in the first place and justified them to people's logic. 

I had no idea where we would get to. It became clear to me how powerful propaganda is, and that history is different depending on where you learn it.  I swung the subject elsewhere.

I wanted to keep my experience of this man—so kind to me—an experience of him and feel that we both stood as different chess pieces on the chessboard of history, in the larger picture, out of the control of our own hands. We all have to do the best we can in our circumstances. We all have to keep our families safe. We all believe in something. And sometimes, when our beliefs are so different, it's better to stop talking.

I gave the paintings to the couple, hugged my warm hosts, grateful for their sincere warmth. The old man accompanied me all the way to my coach back to Croatia, kind and attentive to the end. He then went for his long walk around the river—which reminds him of the Adriatic Sea he misses so much and will not see again in this life.

A huge red round sun spread over the hills as I left Belgrade and sent a message to the curator from the bus.  I tried to contextualize what I had experienced and share the coincidence of my being the artist in their house and the connections to this ship Split. She got very upset. She said it was a Russian-made boat, not the one made by my grandfather. She defended her husband. Even though what I tried to convey was the realization of it, the synchronicity, and the step that follows—humanness, peace, the reason I would do this show in the first place. Art as a form of friendship and love to share between these countries that were "brothers" but no longer are. She said by sending my observations-that I shut the door with my ass.

My conclusion, though, was respect. I connected all the heart trouble this woman had with the drama she had lived through. She had been in the position of having to choose between her husband and her country, with little children to take care of. She had lived through a lot, and I respected her. I thought it was the pain and the drama that eventually must have inspired her to create this cultural center, where she was working on reconnecting the of two countries and cultures trough art.

Part 3

My ex-husband announced that he had a girlfriend who was going to move into his and our children's home in a couple of weeks. They had met last summer. The children had never before met the woman. I was scared by this—the children not even being introduced and the woman moving in. Aware of his superficiality, I was scared of what values the woman would have. He told me she was from Macedonia.

When the girlfriend moved in with the children, my kids told me that she was from Belgrade. I met the woman—and she was Serbian. She seemed kind. The children liked her, thank God. I told the curator about the woman being from Belgrade and how lucky it was that I had come to Serbia and was so nicely treated by them- so that I would be inspired to be kind to her.

The curator knew the girl precisely. The girlfriend of my ex-husband, moving in with my kids, was a friend of her daughter’s who had practically grown up in the curator's house. She had only the best recommendations and reassurances of the quality of the woman. It made me feel happy—another mad synchronicity! It must be fate.

Part 4

It was summer. My ex-husband came to pick up my kids with his girlfriend in the car. He was smoking a cigarette. The kids got in, and his girlfriend, making a middle finger  at me, in front of my two children, pretended to be touching her hair -with the middle finger—aimed at me .

She  stared into my eyes, and called out of the car to me, "Come inside, let's lie to one another." 

A concept for a painting  emerged out this encounter.

The Iranian artist I was hosting in my house for the Kastela art residency said to me when I described it—"It was not synchronicity and coincidence that those two met last summer. They met on line, didn’t they? The curator and she knew all about you and all about him before those two met, didn’t they?" That never would have crossed my mind.

In fact, synchronicity or not—this girl friend- removed the remnants of my ex from my life thoroughly, like a good bleach. And I am thankful to her for it. Also, from what the children tell me, she is kinder and than the paternal grandmother towards them, who had been helping him with the children before she arrived. So for that, too, I am thankful. Im also thankful to have final got to know the ex better for what he truly is since her arrival, as all the many masks came off. I have learnt the most about Balkan ways and expectations and values right out of that marriage, that because of the nurture in Brittan- as well as live I, could observe as separate to me. 

I feel qualified to make the most bombastic exhibition about the Balkans ever done. 

Full of the bizarre and the beautiful ,the crass, material and the spiritual, savage and dramatic and poetic. 

Part 5

Ps. The exhibition in Belgrade never happened.

Part 6. 

A London one unfolds . 

London, The Monuments exhibiiton

As I had somehow galloped into an artist's life, from the first show in Rome, I had sort of felt less excited about London. After all those years in the city, exploring it in all sorts of ways, I was now loving my Italian immersion.

But I had a solo show in London!

The solo show was generously housed at the Embassy of Croatia Gallery, by the curator, art historian, and Councillor of Culture, Flora Turner, whom I had, out of affection, adopted as an aunt. A wonderful, intellectual lady who kept an eye on me of her own accord in the years I studied in London.

Having been present at many exhibitions opened at the gallery as a student assistant, socialite, wine pourer, and a sort of young mascot in the gallery—well known to the diplomats whom I would visit from time to time—having an exhibition in the embassy sort of felt like having an exhibition in my own house. I was that at home in the embassy building.

When I had arrived at the embassy cellars, where I had stored my St. Martins artwork to choose the work to exhibit, I had assumed it would be all quite simple, as I did not have all that many works at St. Martins, just a few large canvases. But I was guided to a cellar full of boxed-up artworks, many sculptures, and told, "That is all yours!"

"Impossible—this is not all mine," I replied.

"Oh, but it is. We were surprised when the lorry came and emptied all this stuff out."

For an instant, I reeled back into my memory to figure out what had happened! Raffaela had asked me if I could have some artwork stored at the embassy gallery from an exhibition she had curated in London—just for a short while. "Some works," she said. I asked, and the ambassador permitted me to store it—not expecting this quantity. But then, neither did I.

The ginormous cellars of the Croatian Embassy were very full, and a huge part of them was filled with what I had apparently sent over as my St. Martins artwork—a lorry full.

Right. I now understood what the diplomat meant when they inquired when I would move my stuff. I had clearly saved Raffa's ass with this storage, and the ambassador, though, assumed it was mine. And I had no idea it was so enormous. I didn't even do sculpture!

I dug about and found my little corner of paintings. We set them up pretty quickly. I did not want to exhibit just the St. Martins stuff—now that I had just painted the new series of portraits of Marco Castillo, which were a whole new style, full of drama and energy. I wanted to show those. We filled the gallery walls with portraits.

The exhibition opened. I remember some of my friends turned up and surprised me. The diplomats. Mother trained over from Eflord . It was a full house. 

The Embassy of Croatia cultured and raised me in a way. I was invited to some event once as a student, and from then on, I used to go to events held there and assist. I met many interesting scientists, artists, and politicians and started to train my hobnobbing sport—the talking to anyone that can be so terrifying before you dive in. But I became so good with practice, I was the one who would mingle about and make everyone feel connected and connect them among themselves—people I had just met.

The very elegant lady who was the economics diplomat, whom I had long admired for her style, Daria bought the painting of Ed Spurr for her son, Gaj. I loved that a mother would do that for her child.

It all felt so homely. When you are living what you are called to , in my case exhibitions, after painting, whilst there is always adrenaline- it feels so homey, there is an ease to it, the being at the right place at tthe right place at the right time, doing the true work.

That night, seeing it was my birthday around the date, Laurent, my French banker friend, invited us all to the Mandarin Hotel for champagne on Hyde Park and then to Buji's, the club in South Kensington. There, Prince Harry was hanging out with his friends. I think I met the British musician Craig David. I also met the Croatian fortune Konzum empire owner's son, Ivan—we were both just surprised to be Croatian and there. I guess Buji's was the place to be in London in 2006. It seemed being an artist attracted glamour.

Raffa bought me a birthday ticket to Miami Basel on impulse. But just as I made it to the plane, feeling like life was all jet-set, the reality of my Croatian passport hit—I wasn’t making the flight at all, since Croatians needed visas for America then.

 Instead, I sat on a train to my misty Staffordshire village. The taxi dropped me off to a glum stepfather who, through a scowl, without public to see it was honest and said, "What are you here for?" My mother and brothers, who would have remembered it was my birthday, had I met them in the house would have given me a more cheerful welcome to the rural family home. I had to wait for that warmth  for some hours, but luckily the cat Miof,  wanted me there. The moment my mother got back- she got me involved with a holiday job at the  Whittington farm she worked on! No special artist treatment there. Farms always need a hand, selling pie and lemon curd- and no one actually figured out or took seriously the fact that I was already actually living off my own art. 

Bumping into the second Buddhist monk and painting Achille Bonito Oliva

I was in Rome again; it was the autumn of 2019. I was wearing a Victoria Grant hat—sleek, black, extravagant, and simple. A kind of super-hat, chosen specially for the aesthetically conscious Italians. 

The Roman ladies were stopping me in the street to tell me how elegant it was, and as I spread the word about the enchanting London milliner, I realized I was starting to run late for the opening of my live painting performance, "A Cocktail in Rome / A Coffee Between Artists. "  At G-rough gallery bar of the gorgeous art &design hotel in central Rome.

I was somewhere near Piazza del Popolo, having gone to look for the studio of the artist Luigi Ontani, whose atelier is located on a street nearby. Ontani was not to be found in the studio, so I looked for him at Café Rosati, the historical gathering place to the  artists of the Arte Povera movement.

I wished to paint him, of course, during the performance, for he is one of Rome’s living artist legends. I had met him in my younger days, always recognizable in his splendid silk suits in flamboyant colors.

 Luigi was not at the bar, so I left a letter at the studio with my number. I had lunch at ease—la pasta alla matriciana, which, to me, was an emotionally loaded recipe, reminding me of a certain Roman who loved it, when I loved him.

The whole return to Rome after such an absence felt a lot like walking in another version of my self.

 Despite the changes in my life, eternal Rome still looked the same, and people I had met years before started to turn up, slipping back into the most natural friendship.

It suddenly dawned on me that my performance was in 30 minutes, and I had to run over to Piazza Navona, and next to it, the little Piazza Pasquino, where stands  G-Rough, where the performance was to start. 

Scolding myself for being too comfortable with time, I ran, puffing out of breath, across the cobbles in red suede heeled boots.

It was a street near the Valentino museum. A quiet street, where everything seemed closed and deserted at this particular hour, where, in a corner of a peeling, earth-colored building, I saw a very shinily decorated little door.

On the flung open door where hanging most unexpected array of objects. Very exotic. Not in the least Roman. There were bells and flags and things that glittered in gold, and my curiosity was roused, so I click-clacked across the street to peer into its dark insides.

The space was tiny, like a big wardrobe. The innards of the space were shadow, but the framing of this shadow was so shiny and out of the ordinary that I was drawn in to see better what lay there.

In the biggest shadow sat a man, a bald man. In front of him was a table upon which he was doing something. He greeted me. He was clearly a monk—a Buddhist monk.

“What is it that you do?” the monk asked.

“I am a painter, an artist. I’m doing a performance here in Rome,” I replied.

“Do you love what you do?” the monk asked.

“I love what I do. It is who I am. But it is difficult sometimes. I’m a mother. It is difficult to live from this sometimes.”

“What you do is very important for this world. È molto importante. Non lo dimenticare.”

“This is for you,” he said, placing incense sticks into my hand. “Every morning, light one and remember who you are. Say to yourself, I am an artist on my path, and light it.”

He then took another box of incense—of the same kind, the Nag Champa Agarbathi incense in a yellow box with red letters—and insisted I take them both.

And then, I left, for there was nothing I really wanted to buy—I was just curious. And I ran a kilometer to G-Rough, via the Colosseo, to start the performance on time.

Again, as the first time, I hoped—and was more convinced through experience—that the Buddhist monk must have meant a blessing.

Of course, he was.

That particular performance was sponsored by my friend from "La Famiglia" the art collector Gabriele Salini, who hosted me and the performance in his beautiful boutique design & art hotel.

The performance was in the Gallery Bar on the street level, and this time, live, I painted while the wonderful G-Rough cocktail masters made us drinks and tiny butter pizzas.

 While I painted, Assia de Baudi, the Italian writer and collaborator on the project, was in close proximity, unobtrusively listening to the conversations between myself and the other artists I was painting.

Assia, myself, and G-Rough started to collaborate with a desire to create  a coffee table book, in which woud appear the portraits I was painting the Roman artists—many of whom have art work in this art and design hotel, and represent a part of the Contemporary Roman art scene.

At G-Rough, I painted portraits from life of the artists: Pietro Pasolini, Zazie, Guendalina Salini, Francesca Del Gatto, Francesca Dusica, Francesca Romana Pinzari, Giuli Pidodoro, Marco Raparelli, Flavio Del Marco, Valerie Gianpietro, Alessandro Ciccorria, Alessandro Piangiamore, Thomas Hutton, Mario Del Mare, Luca Padroni, and Antonello Viola.

The artist Enzo Cucchi appeared every day and observed the live performance from the bar, but when asked if I could paint him, he flat-out refused. Capricious as I sometimes am, I painted him anyway—for the gallery bar had mirrored walls, and he watched me paint him from his reflection. It was a sort of capricious double act from both of us. He was glad I did it, or he wouldn’t have allowed it.

Luigi Ontani on the other hand telephoned and invited me for breakfast at Rosati Bar the following day, where, amidst the rush of the morning caffè goers, with his Tuscan gallerist present as well as a young celebrity photographer from London, I painted him as we broke the fast. He was so satisfied with the portrait that he asked me to give it to him. Flattered by the great artist- I gave him the portrait. 

 On the way to paint him and back form the painting I walked past the little magic door of the Buddhist monk, which was shut, and so plain from the outside, with nothing interesting to it whatsoever. It looked as if it had not been opened for years. 

On the first night of the performance, while still relatively incognito to the Romans, I had wandered out of G-Rough and towards Piazza Farnese, which I loved dearly, having lived very close to it and having experienced quite a bit of my earlier life there. 

I remembered eating my first-ever raw meat—tartare—there, quite by accident. A journalist had invited me to dinner, and when I asked him to recommend something to eat, I unknowingly ordered it. An on-and-off vegetarian, I was extraordinarily terrified when, unaware of what this dish actually was, I watched the waiter ceremoniously prepare this raw meat and raw egg specialty for me. Out of politeness, I had to try it, and I was absolutely shocked at how much I liked it.

I walked over the cobbles to the square and across it, wearing high heels and the emperor’s hat, when—ho!—someone stopped me from Bar Caponeschi. "Vieni qua!" he demanded in the imperative. "Ecco l’imperatore di Giappone," he said, proceeding to explain how he had watched the coronation of the Emperor of Japan that very day and that my hat was just like the emperor’s.

The words belonged to a familiar face that reeled in my memory storage until I remembered the incident some 15 years before, when I a 22 year old, had met the famous man at a collector's elegant exhibition afterparty and had stolen a Cuban cigar from his mouth whilst he was mid conversation—just because he was the notorious art critic and curator Achille Bonito Oliva- and I wanted to tease him- or simply and have him notice me - the young artist.

Achille invited me to sit at the table with him and his numerous friends, had wine brought to me, and, within a few sentences, found out who I was, what I was doing in Rome, and—perhaps to test my competence—he invited me to come and paint him from life the next morning in his house.

When he left, the grand man that he is, it was up to his friends to fill me in with details, address, and their shock at something like this occurring in the first place. Achille Bonito Oliva does not do this sort of thing— Paolo explained, and the fact that he had invited me to paint him, in his house, the next day, was a great honor and an exception.

The following day, I awoke early, had breakfast at the gorgeous artsy hotel home for the duration of the performance,  and walked over to the street the infamous Italian art critic resides on.  I stopped at a tiny old man's bar the kind Rome is full of and had a prosecco to help me chill out, for Achille was a big deal when I was a young artist and still is in Italy and internationally. I was curious to get to know who he is behind all the legends. 

The door of the elegant palazzo apartment was opened by a lady and I was served coffee in Achille's living room, surrounded by artworks from many art masters of the last century and stacks of books. He sat in front of me in a living room so impeccably clean that I was relieved my watercolors, at this point, no longer made a mess while painting. The greatest Italian Critic i was warned about in my younger days, and I talked for an hour as I painted. I did not feel fear, and the portrait turned out perhaps younger and sharper, as I had expected him to be- during the dialogue learned about Achille's journey in art—how his passion for it began, and which artists and families we had both worked with. Then we took a photo of him and the painting. He said he liked it. And I retuned to G-rough to paint the artistes tightly booked, to fill in as much of my time with actual painting, before my return to Split. 

One of the nights, I was swept up by the artists I had painted for the performance—Valeria Gianpietro and Alessandro Ciccorria—who took me to dinner, with Mario Del Mare, and a European prince in disguise, and a few other artists in tow. We had a wonderful night of dancing in some club. Another evening, I was taken to the house of an art journalist for a house party, and when I arrived, I was surprised by how many people I knew. It amazed me that this bustling social life I had left—my Roman life, almost two decades ago—had carried on always in unceasing parties and art.

This time, I had arrived in Rome by ship—sailing from Split to Ancona, then by train—carrying two large portraits of my art patrons at the time, the Formilli-Fendi couple. One was a silk satin and concrete portrait of La Rodro, and the other, concrete and oils on Irish linen, was of Andrea. 

Missing the first train because of the traffic as Flavio drove me to the station, I almost missed the boat home, and almost wanted to , for I liked feeling a part of this Roman reality where there fact I was an artist was normal. I now left Rome with photographs of the portraits I had completed of the Roman artists, along with incredible reconnections, and the life stories of artists residing in Rome, with plans to return and complete the project. 

Some artists were hesitant about being painted—it’s strange to be asked, isn’t it to be painted form life in a bar? To some, it sounds corny, like street caricatures. But the moment of painting is magical, almost alchemical. Every artist who participated thanked me for the experience, the dialogue, and the exchange. 

I was grateful to hear the incredible ideas and inspirations of so many brilliant and sensitive souls—to learn how they feel, how they work, and who they are. 

Since the encounter with the Second Buddhist monk, every morning, I light that very brand of incense stick—using the gas flame that also brews my morning coffee—and say to myself: 

"I am an artist on my path."  

As incredible as it is, its the thing I seem to keep reminding myself of in Croatia. 

The familiarity of this scent has become sacred to me. My home smells of this incense every morning ever since.

Life & death of the artist and the Budhist monk

I was running to the meeting with the art director and manager of Florian's Bar. Right off the Accademia, across the bridges, squeezing and elbowing my way through the million tourists and art addicts who had landed in Venice for the Biennale opening—like me.

I was very nervous. Within myself, I was praying to the angels, to God, to the Goddess, to give me a hand, to help me convince Florian’s Bar to allow me to carry out the performance I had seen in a vision a couple of months earlier and was now here to do.

The performance was a matter of life and death for this artist.

I was either going to succeed or fail. If I failed, I would go back to Split and stop being an artist altogether. 

I would get a normal job, as my husband's family had envisioned for me and as I had fought against for years—on a reception desk.

The vision of this performance came to me in a flash while painting the Argentine artist Ernesto Morales through a video call. I shared the idea with him right than, and he thought it was impossible and stupid.

I shared the idea with Marina in Los Angles, and she said, "Go do it," and held my hand metaphorically with messages all the way from Split, via Slovenia, to Venice on the million-hour coach journey, where my body was stiff with adrenaline and fear.

Dakis Joannou, whom I had the honor of meeting and painting—also via a video call from his office in Athens—said to me, "Do it. Don’t ask permission from anyone. Italians are so bureaucratic that if you start, it will take forever, and in the end, they might say no. This way, at least no one has told you not to do it."

Antonio had a house in Venice and aunts there, I remembered, and I asked to him to figure out who the mysterious owner of Florian’s Bar was. I appealed via Instagram for permission to do the live painting performance in the bar in the most desperate way, giving so many reasons, for i simply had to do this performance, and I was in Venice already.

My vision connected the eons of artists in Florian’s Bar with those of today. I wanted to be the artist who paints the artists arriving to present at the Biennale. Artists sometimes fall into the shadows of their work, and I wanted them to feel like muses for a moment—in Venice, at the Biennale opening, at the most romantic and oldest café on St. Mark’s Square, where the Biennale was conceived. With the big band playing movie classics, and the delicious coffee and cake rituals, I wanted them to have that moment, to bee seen, valued and relish it. My life is a movie moment.

I had managed to convince my husband to support the idea and invest in it. I had 12 days in Venice booked. My 1.5-year-old baby Flori was at home with him and the nanny, who was helping, and in this way, weaning her off breastfeeding. And I had enormous, full breasts, leaking milk through my clothes, as I, too, had to be weaned off the baby.

Three women designers  decided to support me. I had written to them with the concept, and each one of them sent me their art to dress me for the role. Anamaria Asanović equipped me with a series of dresses, Tamara Bombardelli lent me a huge number of her bags, and Victoria Grant sent over a hat she had selected for me to wear for this performance, which I picked up in Venice—except it was not a hat; it was a black, beautiful crown. I did not really know these women well at the time, and their support not only surprised me but made my flighty intention seem more serious, making my performance real and my obligation to actually do it undeniable, even though the whole time I almost disbelieved I could.

Running to the meeting I had managed to arrange by sheer miracle, I saw a monk ahead of me. By his attire, he looked like a Buddhist monk. For an instant, something in my body engulfed him, recognizing him as a sign from the divine.

From the biography of Marina Abramović, I had gathered that whenever Buddhist monks appear and pray in her house, miracles and blessings seem to follow. So, while I had not touched on Buddhism, to me, this man was a sign—or so I hoped, in this moment of nervous adrenaline. Just as I was about to pass him, the monk grabbed my hand, placed a wooden bracelet upon it, and a little golden badge into my palm, closing my fingers over it. He asked me to write my name in his prayer book so he could pray for me. So I did.

Bundling past the elegant stores, nearing St. Mark’s Square, I looked into my hand to see what he had placed there. In my palm was a golden badge upon which was written:

"Work and find peace."

I smiled, put on my black high heels, and click-clacked trough the chessboard stone paving into Florian’s Bar.

There, the management of Florian’s listened to my idea. They decided not only to allow me to paint and realize this performance for the entire pre-opening Biennale week while the art world was in Venice, but they also solved the scariest element—the most expensive coffees I had ever had on this planet, which I wasn’t sure I could cover for all the artists, were going to be sponsored by Florian’s Bar, along with anything my artist muses wanted to drink. 

It was a coincidence that this was the single Biennale for which Florian’s had not commissioned an artist intervention—because the institution was celebrating its 370th anniversary and was preparing to make a movie in the autumn. So for this Biennale opening in Florian’s, there was simply Sunci. Seeing as Florian’s only worked with pedigree artists, this blessing was quite a platform.

In the days that followed, I painted many artists who were thrilled with the experience of being served silver-service coffee and treated delightfully by white-suited waiters as they had their portraits painted in the heart of bustling, dreamy Venice.

I met the artist Tomás Saraceno, who was a star of that Biennale, and for whom Florian’s held a little breakfast party—complete with tarot readings of his spider tarot cards—while I carried on painting, right in the middle of the party, capturing a number of his guests from life on canvas.

I arrived in Venice completely alone, on a guerrilla art mission, petrified.

While painting, I made many friends—the best of them being the Viennese artists Lua Mua and George M. For the next few days, the three of us became the Gate Crasher Collective, entering many art parties with random princes, diplomats, and artists—uninvited but welcomed upon arrival. I even entered the Biennale gardens themselves, for which I had no pass until my arrival in Venice, but I ended up getting in with an invitation bearing my full name. 

I saw another guerrilla artist posing as an old man painter—Banksy—selling paintings of Venice. Of course, I only figured it out after reading about it in a magazine later.

There were a lot of people I knew from my past life as an Italian artist who were present, as ever, in the Biennale hallucination—where, as far as my subconscious is concerned, they all reside permanently. By seeing it all existing—the people, the art, the world art tribe gathered—it helped to decalcify the crust of disbelief that I had developed in the Balkans, where it’s so easy to doubt that an art scene exists where art is appreciated, where artists are valued and honored, and where they can actually make a living from it.

The Balkan artist is plagued by terrifying self-doubt, frequently questioning whether they are mad for carrying on . Society is so materialistic, living in a permanent state of scarcity and mere survival, so anti-artist in its mechanical, material function. Artists are crucified again and again—by neighbors, family, and society—who don’t understand them and just want them to shut up, get a hair cut like everyone else, get a safe job all the way to retirement, and be a cog in the post socialist- system that runs well enough -if only they would stop glitching.

Even Marina Abramović said to me, "I left the Balkans when I was 29, and even that was too late," when I asked her how to do it here.

The Venice Biennale does exist, however, and it is the closest sense of heaven on earth for an artist. The things that can be experienced in the pre-opening days of the Biennale in Venice are as bizarre, magnificent, beautiful, and delightful as they are filled with an enormous amount of serendipity—actually, pure magic. But it works on trusting the magic—it all happens to you if you dare, if you go, if you jump. I suppose the magic is even augmented, the miracles all the more palpable and frequent, because enough believers find themselves in the same place at the same time.

The whole week, everywhere I went, everybody in the streets and at the parties—because of my headpiece—called me La Regina. But what I had done was prove to myself that I am and continue to be, and that it is worthy to be, despite the context—where it is difficult as a mother of two, a wife, and with the expectations of my husband’s family and a Balkan society that has little art industry—to carry on being myself, an artist, something I keep having to remember.

La Raffa

Raffaela and I became conscious of one another in a big, black, shiny London cab, driving through central north London under the most enormous yellow full moon.

We had met a few hours earlier at the design book opening and the exhibition of Beatles photos Raffaella Guidobono had curated, but we were distracted from any significant communication by the sheer chaos and quantity of people around us. Extracted to this cab, with only a few people around, there was space to feel one another.

Staring out of the window, we both recognized the big moon as significant, and by doing so, each witchy woman recognized the other witchy woman as one for whom magic exists.

We were driven to an Italian architect's house party. The next time I saw Raffaela, I was hosting her in my Chelsea home for one night. I was the nanny in that home, but the family was away in France, and she just needed to crash for a night.

I loved her perfume. She had landed from the airport, already done some business, and came over to sleep at mine. We had breakfast together—muesli—over a whole dining table full of scraps of photographs, cutouts, and papers I was trying to make into a cohesive investigation and documentation book. This should have preceded the three paintings I was presenting for my final-year fine art degree assessment.

My paintings of beautiful young men, who looked as if they were somewhere between dead or in ecstasy, were inspired by Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin’s lighting, and one by the Greek frieze at the British Museum. I had spent months painting the oil paintings, which I was confident in, while the mess on the table, which accounted for a large piece of the grade, was throwing me into desperation.

I was so desperate with this horrific mess that I resorted to kitchen magic and started making little potions—magic coffees full of roses I had plucked from the garden and herbs that I chanted over for luck, meant to keep me awake at night trying to figure out how to present this sheer mountain of stuff. Instead of keeping me awake, the pesticide on the roses spurred a rash all over my body—tiny pink spots that itched all through my last week of college.

Intrigued by the lack of sense, Raffa went to see my exhibition in Charing Cross and then left for Rome.

Since I have known her, Raffa has worn this sort of little mafia hat. She wears a lot of big rings, has sparkly brown eyes that shine with magic from black eyelashes and black eyeliner, and folds herself into several types of clothes that only Raffa can combine. Not very tall but full of spunk, La Raffa is always in movement. While you may have four projects, Raffa tends to have 84 projects on the go right now. And as she walks from place to place, magic occurs at such a rate that it is beyond belief. She meets such an array of people, introduces them, gets invited, gatecrashes, does several different businesses at the same time—so much so that even I, who came to know her very well, was unable to always get it. She is perpetually mobile, unceasing, unending, and you might meet her in New York, London, Milan, Paris, Rome, Venice, Palermo, Torino, Bogotá, Istanbul, Split—on a train, bus, plane, ferry, taxi, over dinner, at an opening, in a lecture, a cocktail party—but most often in exhibitions, for she is a genuine, deep heart felt and serious art connoisseur.

La Raffa, to me, was probably the single most important person in Rome. But because we became like sisters, like a duet, like a gush of water droplets present together in the sea of  activity, it is her I painted least of all. I am sorry about this. But we were both hopeless romantics, falling in love a lot, and those people needed to be painted. And we had to live off something, and painting, for me, was the only real source of money. Clients had to be painted, collectors, and groups of people I painted for projects had to be painted. She was my dealer, gallerist, curator, and guru of the most unpredictable, bizarre, art & magic-filled life.

She looked after me, introduced me to everyone, and spurred me on in every cheeky thought I had—to go and do it. And so Raffa made my confidence grow. She made sure I ate and had somewhere to sleep, and she delighted in me in a way that a mother might delight in her delicious, naughty, brilliant daughter. And her unending love made me grow confident. So at 22 I became an artist, who lived form art, right from my graduation, because I had Raffa at my side. 

The Marina Abramovic Oracle

My Rome life fell into a rhythm.

In the morning, I would awake around 9, then make a coffee and sit at the computer at Bettie's house and write.

I wrote to whoever wrote to me—my many friends around the world and lovers too. It was the correspondence with the invisible that somehow opened my soul in ways real life did not.

I have led many correspondences with lovers in my life, often with the very relationship depending on the letters exchanged, sometimes even fueling the love to start in the first place, and at times, completely disguising that there was no love at all—just the opportunity to write, be open, and have evidence that the invisible recipient, who was glad and replied, existed. The writing would soothe my soul, and there I was, in silence.

This delicious little ritual was followed by walking down the steps and over the cobbled streets. If I had money, I would go get a cornetto with white chocolate at Mario's bar, a coffee, and a spremuta. If I was broke, I'd go straight into the gallery.

I was always either in joyful abundance or broke, and when the shifts would happen was unpredictable. When I would sell a painting—I had no idea when—but I knew I would sell a painting, I was sure of it, so each month I did. The collectors found me. Not the other way around.

I lived the life of an artist. I sustained myself by painting, and a lot of magic- that I just counted on.

So after breakfast, I would go around the corner to the cobbled street where Aka Gallery stood, and there I would paint most of my day. My working hours were so predictable that my friends would just swoop by and either stop for a chat with me in the gallery—where they would often become a muse for a painting, impromptu—or they would take me off somewhere for lunch.

Lunch was always around 2 p.m., often in a trattoria, always accompanied by delicious red wine in my case. I was always invited to lunch. I'm still not sure if it was because I was an artist and the Italians love art to the core, or because I was a young woman, or because I was a young woman who was an artist—but I was always invited. Gallerists, collectors, art lovers—they always invited me, and lunch, if I had it, was mostly for free. They always came to pick me up .it was rare that I had to look for or think about lunch. Lunch happened just like sales of paintings did.

After lunch, I would return to the gallery to spend many more hours painting—without sitting down, painting and dancing to music. People would always stop by, as the gallery was on the ground floor, so even surprise randoms would discover my work through the window, watching from outside. Then they would step inside. Then they would sit down and start talking to me.  And then the randoms would start stopping over more often and calling me over to their events, and they would bring over friends.

7 p.m. in Rome was the hour of the gallery openings. Or maybe it was at 7 that I began my voyage across eternal City. There were exhibition openings almost every night of the week, except Sundays. Someone would pick me up and drive me wherever in Rome this event was. I had a "casco" helmet in a "Freitag bag," ready to be driven around by the hive of art addicts, and someone always did. 

Raffa had an old Vespa that hadn't been registered for like nine years, which we drove around together on—often the wrong way down one-way streets—and were chased down by police on more than one occasion. But I do remember once when I finally got caught on a motorino by a policeman who made us stop because I had no helmet. He stopped us on the road. I asked him to let us go. He asked why he should let me go, and I replied, "Perché sono bella." He laughed and let us go—without a fine for all the other faults on the bike.

In Rome, I was cheeky, arrogant, felt young and indestructible, and I dared to go beyond proper manners or good behavior because the Italians not only endorsed this kind of behavior—they seemed to love it, love me even more—for every enfant terrible behavior I dared .

Mostly, Raffa loved me. The cheekier I was, the more Raffa applauded me with delight—and the scarier the ideas I had for art, the more she said, "Yes, yes, go!"

At the exhibition opening, we would walk around, see the work, drink wine, eat lasagna—as weird as that is. In Italy, often, there was actual real food at exhibition openings, upon which a lot of us relied for sustenance—because who had the time to think about food in reality, and often there was no money . The gods fed the young artists in this way.  Then we would pop over to the next exhibition.

There were many groups of art addicts haunting Rome. But almost like football leagues, where we would meet certain people was limited because there were leagues in the art game. The amount of exclusive parties gatecrashed seemed to give a good idea of the level of the players—journalists, gallerists, students, artists, collectors. 

At the most difficult parties to get into, there were fewer and fewer people, and those people who could enter any party always seemed to be the same faces. Gate-crashing Roman Cinema parties, appearing at some aristocrat collector's palace, or being at the Lorcan  gallery after-exhibition party dinner, filtered out those who could not. Those who did , made my circle of Romans, and closer still were a few artists, gallerists, writers, collectors—who among ourselves out of love called each other "La Familia," and on different days, it was of a different size.

One night, after we had done the exhibitions and possibly a dinner in a trattoria, Gabriele insisted we went over to his sister's house.

Of course, when you are completely new in Rome as I was, it takes a while to understand the subcurrents of who the big, old, wealthy families are that I was mixing with, for mostly, we were socializing on a first-name basis. It turns out that this was a "Bulgari" , party because the sister was now a Bulgari, and the legacy of Gabri's family, a central figure of La Familia, I only learned years after leaving Rome.

 We bashed in through the doors into a very elegant, low-lit penthouse, with middle-aged people drinking champagne quietly and someone playing on the piano. 

A movie set of pure elegance.

Of course, I rather suspect Gabri knew the tone of what he was to encounter within, which is why he pulled us into the apartment—italians love to jazz up the over dull and elegnant- by adding some youth to the mix, the younger, raw, wild, unrestrained, ready to dance and create some havoc, lift the energy up. We entered the scene and started a dancing .

Some time later, I noticed a beautiful woman. She was tall. Dressed in black velvet. Had long dark hair—she looked the way women in my family do. She was so elegant that I decided to go up and tell her so.

"You are so beautiful. I wanna be you when I grow up."

As she smiled at me, I recognized the face from the art history books.

"It's you," I continued, my eyes aglow. I recognized Marina Abramović, who had inspired me in a profound way with Balkan Baroque, which said something I could never put into words. Who represented me—being from the Balkans. Whose performance inspired me to enter performance art in the first place.

The first time I saw Marina's face was in Ms. Jude's art class, in an art book. And here I saw her from life, and she was mesmerizingly beautiful.

I was even more surprised later in Rome when we met by chance. Feeling her to somehow belong to me like family—as irrational as it is—I skipped over to say hi, and Marina Abramović introduced me just as familiar as "A little Sun." and than we'w never met since.

The day I will paint her from life and have that dialogue, that heart-to-heart ritual, is nearer now. 

When I have had it tough in my life, I have written to Marina and asked—like the ancients used to ask the Oracle—what should I do? 

And Marina Abramović always replies to me, in mystical, beautiful words, like the Oracle that, to me, she has become.

We later flew out of the Bulgari nest, and probably landed at some next dancing situation, where Nero editors where dj'ing and electronic music and vine in plastic was all the rage. 

Many nights I would dance till near dawn. Only to next day start all over again. Protagonists altering over lunch and mortorinos, the opening exhibitions where in different locations, we went to a different trattoria for diners and different houses for the afterparty. I was slim form all the dancing and would drop to sleep instantly every night. 

The colour Emerald.

Luca was wearing an emerald green jumper and DJ’ing at the Académie Française afterparty for an exhibition that opened there. I was wearing an emerald green jumper and a tight striped Max Mara skirt I had bought in Paris, and what were white All-Star shoes, now stained with mushroom blotches from kicking melting mushrooms around the Calder Foundation grounds in France the previous week.

He said something about liking my outfit. He then played the song by Pulp, "Common People," about a girl the singer met going to St. Martin’s College—I realized it was for me.

I danced and I danced and I danced. I don’t really think I had a thing for Luca in that moment, but he made me dance. To me, colour was always very important—it said a lot about the people who chose a particular colour, telling me something about their energy. Most of all, of all colours in the world, I loved emerald green, and all its shades diffused in white.

I was sort of between worlds at this point, floating on a tiny piece of ice in the big wide ocean, with currents pulling in all directions. I had no idea where I lived, or where I would live, or how I would live.

I had my first taste of being an artist after graduating, with my solo exhibition at the AKA Gallery in Via del Pellegrino. I saw the incredible expanse of wealth and the jet set—the life connected to art crystallized in Paris, in and around the Nuit Blanches. I also saw the galleries that made money in Rome from the inside, eating with the gallerists and collectors from the day I arrived in Rome. There, a wave of people who loved Raffaella and worked with her engulfed me into a very intense and thick feeling of an art movement, quite unlike anything I had experienced in London.

The French Academy is set in the most beautiful palace, with the most beautiful wide stone staircase—right out of Fellini, or movies about the Roman Empire. It makes you want to just slide down its banisters. A garden surrounded it—lush, gorgeous Mediterranean parks, the kind we in London did not have at all—and barely framing the Academy art studios!

This was another level. The Italian art studios looked nothing like the East London studios of the British artist crowd in the rain—these fucking studios looked like they were set in heaven.

A cheesy, perfect, beautiful, pasta-marketing type of heaven. All that was missing were the fat little angels playing golden harps, flying around. God.

But there was Luca, and he was playing electronic music—to kill the cliché beauty, bring it down a notch, cool it up, disregard it, contrast. So I danced. I can’t remember whether I had a champagne flute in my hand or a plastic wine cup—to emphasize the cool, probably the latter.

I seem to remember the exhibition we came to see was by the boyfriend of Marina Abramović, and then, on the beautiful stone staircase, I first set eyes on a very beautiful man who looked so much like a real-life prince—which, many years later, I found out he was. In between, we became dear artist colleagues, competitors, and friends.

My flight out of Rome, for Paris Charles de Gaulle, was the next day. I was flying back to spend some more time with the Cuban sculptors and accompany them to the FIAC art fair, to see that for the first time.

I had connected with Marco while dancing to Buena Vista Social Club on the oak kitchen table of Bettie’s house a few weeks earlier, when they were in Rome for their exhibition at the 1/9 Gallery, curated by the same Raffaella, in whose gallery I had an exhibition. We were sort of compatriots by curator. And something in our correspondence, in my writing, made Marco invite me to the Nuit Blanches.

The lure of writing—so many times, my opening up, which happens when I am alone with the screen and write—ended up getting me into a romance far faster than would have happened in person, it seems. I like correspondence.

We danced far too long into the night. Raffaella left me to it. Barbara was to drive me home. But Barbara somehow, quite on purpose it seemed, drove me over to Luca's, who had a tiny plastic motorino to take me the rest of the journey.

He wanted to show me something, of course, before driving me to Bettie’s house. We jumped into a black wrought-iron lift—the film noir kind, the kind still in function only in Rome—and up to his tiny, modern apartment stuffed with art books.

He put an article he had written into my hands.

“Do you know about Nero magazine?” he asked.

He was the editor of Nero magazine. An art magazine. And there were three more editors—his friends. Luca looked at me with patience as I read this very important-to-him article—only I couldn’t really admit, at that point, at 6 a.m., floating in fatigue between night and dawn, that my Italian was not that brilliant and I couldn’t really understand it in its true splendor. But I did recognize that Raffaella had several Nero magazines in AKA Gallery.

I’m pretty sure a kiss must have happened. Maybe even a breakfast in a bar. For sure though, he drove me on his blue plastic motorino, with me holding onto his waist and my legs around the motorino as if it were a horse. He drove me to my side of town, through the growing Rome morning, speeding the way only Italians dare—between cars and lorries, diving in and out, in the most reckless way.

I just stared at the tall, lush plane trees that grow all the way down the River Tevere, the ones whose leaves I had jumped upon in a white magic exchange—each leaf for a day longer in Rome.

I was happy I was still, somehow, miraculously, there. And enjoyed this terrible fragility, riding the tiny mosquito bike between trucks and intense traffic noise, in a sort of daze, ignoring it all, and just trusting in this young, fragile but self-assured writer.

The artist arrives in Rome

A Day in Rome 1 The train arrived at Termini station. I had traveled from Croatia, through Venice, with a brief stop at a Mexican architect’s place during the Architecture Biennale. I arrived in Rome with a bag full of clothes, my arms weighed down with large rolls of paper, and the bodies of young muses I had painted in bikinis over the summer. I called Dani’s number. I couldn’t reach Raffaella no matter how many times I tried. If I didn’t get through to her, I had no idea where I would stay, let alone how I would have my exhibition. I might have to take the train back to Croatia. The only other number I had was her producer friend. He wasn’t in Rome either, but at least he picked up the phone from Hong Kong, where he was. He told me Raffaella was expecting me and explained how to take the bus across Rome to the place she had arranged for me—a wild house full of her friends. But he wasn’t there. Did I want his much better apartment instead? No? Okay. The gallery was just down the street from the house. “Get on the bus and ask them to drop you off at Chiesa Nuova.” 2 With my hands full, I got on the bus, which rolled me over the city and spat me out like a lost tourist in front of a white church. 3 The house was on the fifth floor of a terracotta-colored building. Everyone in Betty’s house was expecting me. Betty’s house was home to a group of Buddhists, the teenage daughters of a South American ambassador in exile, an artist, and all kinds of traveling writers, musicians, and world wanderers. Raffaella would sometimes rent out her own place to tourists for a small fortune and take up a bed at Betty’s instead. The apartment was grand, one of those old aristocratic flats with terracotta floors, high ceilings, walls lined with books and travel maps. Chandeliers, cobwebs, and souvenirs from all over the world hung from the ceiling. Every room except the kitchen had large wooden bunk beds built into them. And at the center of it all was the kitchen, with a five-meter-long table. 4 They were all waiting for me. Raffaella had told them I was a special guest and had left me her gallery assistant’s number. In London, no one waits, so I called her. She arrived on a scooter and opened the gallery, chattering in rapid Italian. The space where I was supposed to have my exhibition was a complete mess—dead plants, boxes of old shoes, piles of magazines, books, and clothes. It looked like a deep, chaotic flea market and smelled of dampness and the desperate need to be cleared out. I expected the assistant to clean it up, but instead, she just handed me the keys, hopped back on her scooter, and disappeared. 5 If my exhibition was going to be in that space, I decided, then the space would have to be transformed. I started carrying out all the old shoes, stacks of newspapers, and heaps of clothes to the dumpster. After I cleared the first room, the assistant reappeared, shrieking into her phone, frantically signaling that I wasn’t allowed to throw anything away. She led me downstairs, where a series of basements spiraled deep beneath the gallery like a snail’s shell. She helped me haul all the junk into the belly of this beast—dark, windowless, with no electricity. Once I had cleared several rooms, I bought white paint and set to work covering the walls. And when the walls were clean, I began to paint. 6 My first models were the girls in exile.

Tracey Emin arrives in Rome

As you can guess, Tracey Emin’s opening at Lorcan’s gallery was quite the event of our art addicted scene and the various categories of art passionates jammed the gallery and the street in which its sits packed. Clatter, conversation,and beer, meants it was the place to be that night, as was the afterparty the that my circle of people always are art- or our circle ends up being all the people who always manage to gate crash or know the right person - though the atmosphere felt somewhat subdued to usual. Emin arrived in a striking gold outfit, making quite an entrance. Her latest works featured a series of expressive, abstract paintings, or nothing less nor more than- Vaginas!. It was certainly a bold statement, in keeping with her signature raw approach. Rome, on the other hand, is as classical and wonderful as ever—hot, sunny, and full of life. It’s the perfect place to work seriously, though the temptation to get lost in its charm is always there. The city still carries echoes of past artistic generations, carries all the working art eons at tonce somehow mixed in to the afternoon light , it is impossible not to work here. Life is good, and I’ve been working tirelessly in the studio. DADa is involved in an ever-growing number of projects, and I hope you’ll become a fixture in Rome too. Keep the emails coming! Baci da LaLa, DADa, and tribu

marrying his family

Being a wife or entering matrimony, in tiny letters beneath the contract, too small to be seen at the wedding, actualy means not only marrying a man, but also marrying his family. And no it does not mean gaining a mother and father in law, but being married to them, the second you say I do, and sign beneath the statement.
This is not all bad, there are plenty of elements in this marriage one can get used to, just as a child gets used to eating green vegetables once he covers them with ketchup, and eventually swallows down crumbley broccoli ketchup free. But there are elements to this marriage that one is pushed into, with no safety belt, no warning, like a fly into hot gloopy custard, and one simpley wonders how did i end up here,  or am i dreaming?
The theme we are going to nit pick aobut today, dear firends, married or unmarried beware, is aesthetis.
Yes.
 I married into a birocratic family, all lawyers,barriesters,  and the likes, and as you all are aware i am an artist. However in this married new family of mine, pre exsisiting my arrival, a hirachy exsisted, where the father is god thunderer, in all elemants of life, including aesthetics.
Woops.
Yes god thunderer, Zeus, Thor also known as my father in law, is quite confident that his opinion of aesthetics is equal to that of his divine position, as in He created all, there for all he created is good.
A small matter of our diplomas meant notthing once I enetered this battle field, that is my Fine art Degree from St. Martin's, London really has no better chances in having more right in the matter of visuals than his Law degree from the Universiy of Split.
The first battles we lead, where small, and iritating like mosquitoes, battles which where almost polite, napoleonic wars, in bright colored uniforms, oh sir i am sorry i must shoot you down, but you know how it goes, so bang.
The father in law bought my boyfirend square toed, thick soled, crocodile skin shoe,s for the office. Becouse they where on a sale. I laughed and mocked them down as soon as the box was opened. The father in law  tried reason, the mother in law started folding towels, my boyfriend than said may be, dad oh, looked at my quite serious face, and declined the gift. It was about than that the war started. For than every purchase for the son, had to be passed infront of me, as really they knew what i did not like would not be worn.
Yes husbands, thats how it is.

I realised my work was cut out for me, and immidealtey got on to eliminating fathers taste, out of my boyfirends wadrobe. Yes there where red checked works shirts in there, and they have never been worn since.

Having got married, I and husband have generousley been given a nest to live in, a generous nest, which has not only been designed on the interios by the father in law who always dream of being an architect...