Jelena Bulajic’s paintings flesh out the profound depth of the human countenance, formally exploring tactility and surface with a unique mix of materials including marble dust, ground granite, limestone and kaolin. In her portraiture, Bulajic’s approach to her subjects is observational: concerned with capturing the passage of time and the effects of individual histories, the gaze from within the paintings is presented without narrative or commentary. More recently Bulajic has extended traditional notions of portraiture beyond the human character – expanding her treatment of surface as a dualistic reflection of physical layers: human skin, water, the sky as well as the paint itself on the canvas is the “life material” of the work. Committed to the physicality of her materials, she plays with control and lack thereof in an uncompromising negotiation of surface tension and quality to produce meaning.

Jelena Bulajic received her BA in Visual Art from the Academy of Arts at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She went on to complete an MA at the City & Guilds of the London Art School and has exhibited internationally in London, Serbia, Germany, the U.S. and Scotland. Accolades include the GAM MA Fine Art Prize, City & Guilds of London Art School (2013), the Niš Art Foundation Award (2013), the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2012), and the Grand Diploma for Drawing, XIV INTERBIFEP (2011), among others. Bulajic lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia. She had her first institutional show in 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina (MSUV), Novi Sad, Serbia.