The exhibition was opened by Caroline Spivak, the founder of the Croatian Women’s Network, and showcases the amazing work of artists Iva Batistić, Ivana Tkalčić (winner of the 2018 Croatian Women of Influence Award) and Nada Franka Čakar
The CHF headquarters in Zagreb was the venue on the 9th of March for the opening of the Three Artists in the Network of Croatian Women exhibition, hosted by the CHF as part of the presentation of Croatian Women’s Network awards for influential women and prominent leaders among women of Croatian extraction.
The Croatian Heritage Foundation also hosted a reception for the award winners and organisers, with CHF director Mijo Marić and the head of projects at our culture department Nives Antoljak on hand to welcome everyone.
Also on hand for the opening of the exhibition were deputy state secretary at the State Office for Croats Abroad Ivana Perkušić and her aids, CHF board of directors chairman Milan Kovač and Arne Sven Hartig, the attaché for culture at the German embassy in Croatia.
Nives Antoljak opened with a presentation of the artists, noting that the exhibition links three artists whose cultural creativity and work are part of the Croatian and global culture scene.
As has already been noted the exhibition presents three visions and experiences of the world and on the one hand promotes innovative artistic practices and new formats of modern artistic expression, and on the other hand encourages collaboration among female ethnic Croatian artists in the diaspora communities, including networking and connecting with influential Croatian women around the world.
The exhibition was opened by Caroline Spivak, the founder of the Croatian Women’s Network, and showcases the amazing work of artists Iva Batistić, Ivana Tkalčić (winner of the 2018 Croatian Women of Influence Award) and Nada Franka Čakar.
Iva Batistić is a street art photographer from Frankfurt of Croatian background with experience in translation and conference interpretation. Her photographic work arrived from Dubrovnik where she exhibited them last summer at the premises of our local branch office. Strolling through the streets she records her moments and those of others, playing with shadows and reflections with a minimalist approach. Her portfolio includes the streets of Frankfurt, Berlin, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Paris, New York and other cities. She has been enamoured of photography since the age of fifteen and also works in serial photography. Her work has been published in many catalogues, from Croatia to India, with exhibitions of series of street photographs staged in Frankfurt and in Croatia.
Ivana Tkalčić, is a Croatian woman of many addresses who always comes home to Croatia. She received a diploma in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Economics and Business. She was at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich for the 2014/15 academic year. She was a finalist in Erste Fragmenti (a project of Erste bank that supports upcoming artists), a recipient of the Red Carpet Art award and the University of Zagreb’s Rector’s Prize for independent art work. She has staged numerous solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions at venues in Vienna, Zagreb, Vietnam, Ukraine, Osijek and elsewhere. She has worked to promote her work as an artist and Croatian art circles within the frame of many projects at art residences in Austria, Belgium, Greece, Norway and Poland. Through her artistic work she encourages the strengthening of the Croatian art and culture scene abroad.
Nada Franka Čakar was born in Zagreb and has lived in four other European countries, with her longest stint being in Austria. She received a master’s degree in economics while in Vienna and a degree in theology and spiritual culture while in Rome. She began her journey into creative work eight years ago after a watershed moment in the development of her career. For the first few years she worked only on installations and sculptures. Since then she has transitioned into also expressing herself through two-dimensional visual arts in the form of photography and drawing. Of late she has added to all this her work as a writer and has penned a political science fiction novel in German, the language she feels most comfortable expressing herself in. To date she has exhibited her work twice at the Beijing International Art Biennale, the Florence International Biennale of Contemporary Art and at an independent exhibition in the Croatian island town of Pag. She is pro-active in raising awareness of the need to preserve the environment in the sense of waste separation and avoiding waste.
As one of the sponsors of the Croatian Women’s Network the Croatian Heritage Foundation once again congratulates all of the recipients of the 2018 Croatian Women of Influence Award and the Top-20-Under-20 Future Leaders Award.
By: Naida Šehović; Photography: Snježana Radoš