Petra Brnardic
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Updated: 11 hours ago
Petra Brnardic is an experimental photographer, analogue digital and video artist who has exhibited, and participated in film festivals, around the world across Europe and in the United States, Asia as well as the Middle East. She is also a writer who has published several poetry books and has visual art works in the permanent collection of Artemizia Foundation in Bisbee, Arizona. Petra has also been extensively published in her native Croatia.
Like a screaming banshee amidst a lightning storm, the photography and video works of Petra Brnardic takes conceptual figurative photography to an entirely different level. Using elements of erotica, horror, fantasy, and paranormal overtones as well as effects, she conjures up a world accentuated by glorious apparitions of despair, nihilism, glory, agony, terror, euphoria, and ecstasy. The variation of the emotional impulses displayed in her various works do not hold back as she uses the female form as a symbol of enchanted power. Often containing motifs of smeared blood and mystical black lipstick, the characters of Petra Brnardic portray a world of non-conformity and rebellion which celebrate paganistic rituals and occult-like symbolism.
These performative photographs and digitally-enhanced videos explore a narrative of the anti-heroine, emboldened character to idolize in their stark beauty but exemplified imperfections such as dripping lipstick and being trapped by plastic bags. Such characters use raw emotional states, vulnerability, and sometimes disturbing or confrontational aspects of the body rather than behave as spectacle or glamour. In essence, these works redefine beauty not as a portrayal of harmony and elegance, but rather aesthetics based in chaos and the macabre, the horror and the extremities of mystique and erotica. In this realm, we will find empowered women who bask in the glories of mayhem and disorder. Anarchistic and revolutionary, the characters of Petra Brnardic are enameled in theatrical lighting, shadows, and filters with both analogue and digital techniques. A glorious display of destruction and beauty, refinement in pandemonium.
Lady of the Lillies (pictured above) exemplifies Petra Brnardic’s unique personal vision of desolation. Drenched in blood red, the actor has tinted flowers as a concealment. Her persona and body language is both of grace and confidence as she stands nude with only lilies to conceal. Her hair is slick, expressions euphoric, and the flowers appear like a revealing gown at first glance. The illusory quality of the piece is quite outstanding, creating initial effects where unraveling becomes apparent upon further study, shrouded by a mist of red sfumato.
Mystical and erotic, the works of Petra Brnardic add a sense of flavor and conceptual character to contemporary photography and video art. Often using very basic tools such as her cell phone or simple analogue computer programs, she creates such immense characteristic complexity with actors who revel in paganistic blood rituals and scenes of macabre glory. These women of the darkness and mystique offer an alternative portrayal of femininity, not based in fragility, but rather enchantment, theatre, and vivid distortion. Through this kaleidoscopic world of hallucinogens and dramatic pose, we discover the realm of Petra Brnardic, a world drenched in the glory of anarchy and magnificent disorder.
