I think my works come from two opposing drives – the need to escape reality and at the same time the need to articulate a critical stance towards it. I’m interested in personal and collective capacities for social imagination; the (in)ability to imagine different futures, especially better ones.

I think my works come from two opposing drives – the need to escape reality and at the same time the need to articulate a critical stance towards it. I’m interested in personal and collective capacities for social imagination; the (in)ability to imagine different futures, especially better ones. The walls that we hit when we try to imagine things being different, and our bouncing back towards collective histories and present situations. Drawing has the ability to make things very immediate and very distant at the same time – thinking can be fast and unconstrained on paper, but at the same time these are all just ideas, concepts, plans, drafts – drawings are suggestions. I think that drawing lends itself well to articulating the limitations and contradictions of our imagination – places where anxiety meets comfort, and catastrophe meets utopia.

Nebojša Yamasaki Vukelić was born in 1986. in Belgrade, where he lives and works. He has received his MA in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 2021. His work is mostly focused on drawing. He has exhibited in numerous group shows, as well as a solo show – Inside it will all be soft and tender, at X Vitamin Gallery. He has received the drawing award of the Vladimir Veličković Fund in 2021, as well as the painting award “Miodrag Janjušević – academic painter”, the same year.