Maja Ruznic (b. 1983 Bosnia & Hercegovina) received a BFA from University of California, Berkeley, CA (2005) and an MFA from California College of Arts, San Francisco, CA (2009). She currently lives and works in Roswell, New Mexico, USA.

Ruznic draws on personal and collective memories to create figurative works that deeply connect with human psyche. In her paintings, she allows for figures to emerge from the thin layers of oil paint she applies to the canvas, the characters seemingly coalesce with their environments. She describes the process of painting as if trying to remember a dream. Throughout her practice, Ruznic deftly weaves themes of trauma and suffering with mythology and healing, softening the darker subject matter. Nostalgic and empathetic, her works ultimately speak of human experience.

Ruznic’s oeuvre resonates with Bracha Ettinger’s theory of ‘Matrixial Borderspace’ – a psychological dimension which acts like a veil, cradling history. A place of shared affect, beyond identity, where our personal and ancestral traumas coexist. Judith Butler writes, in her foreword to Ettinger’s first monograph, ‘the matrixial is what we guard against when we shore up the claims of identity, when we presume that to recognize each other is to know, to name, to distinguish, according to the laws of identity’ (2006). In this sense, Ruznic thinks of the matrixial as a feminine, pre-moral, pre-verbal arena in which she allows the characters of her drawings to dwell. The drawings investigate what it is we all have in common, rather than what sets us apart.

Making drawings is a key part of her practice and a cathartic process for the artist. Juxtaposing the formal qualities of her soft scumbling, mid-tones of her paintings, her drawings are made up of a multitude of fine lines. Meditative and obsessive, Ruznic likens this process to running prayer beads through fingers. A comforting activity, the drawings are intimate, personal and honest. Making these works in the home, the drawings deal with the same overarching themes as her paintings but speak more to domestic traumas within the larger social ones. Ruznic states:

“Because the drawings are made on paper with an ink pen, it feels like I’m writing secrets. This is completely different than how it feels to make my paintings. They require more athleticism and an element of performance. The drawings, which are intimate, end up being more raw, unfiltered and perhaps even more grotesque…. … What the drawings and paintings have in common is that both are unplanned. I let the stains lead the way in the paintings, and the line when I make the drawings.”1

Art historian Ksenia M. Soboleva writes about Ruznic's drawings: "The monochrome palette of ink and graphite invites quiet contemplation. The stain-like aesthetic that is characteristic of Ruznic’s practice is continued in the drawings, charging the soaked paper surface with a promise of transcendence. This visual strategy recalls the work of artists such as Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, both of whom have been formative to Ruznic’s development as a painter. Set in a space that is tangible, but not perspectival, the background evokes mountainous landscapes and wavelike layers of sediment. Certain areas are reminiscent of cells under a microscope, the erratic stains bleeding and blurring into one another, while others are defined by countless meticulous crosshatch marks resembling fine needlework... ...As the eye travels across the scenery, unusual imagery that perhaps went unnoticed at first emerges as if out of a fog; a row of hands floats on its own... ...and mysterious eyes confront our own like headlights in the dark. These details add a playful, folklore-inspired quality to the drawings, revealing Ruznic’s affinity with the imaginative style of Marc Chagall."2