Arijana Kajfes

B. 1963 in Zagreb, Croatia. Lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.

88-93 Kungliga Konsthögskolan, Stockholm.

93-95 worked and travelled in Africa and Asia.

97-99 founding member of CRAC, an artist's medialab in Stockholm.

99-04 founding member of Smart studio, an interdisciplinary research group at the Interactive Institute, Stockholm

First sound work: Red Alert, 2000.

Arijana often explores ideas that break down the issues of vision and interpretation to their most fundamental levels. Light is a basic premise for vision and she has used the medium both physically and metaphorically, as a precognitive and prelinguistic smallest component for the transmission of information.

On the symbolic level, she also uses light to bring out the even greater darkness that surrounds it.

Working with light on the level of wave or particle makes it malleable and transposable into other forms of energy. By translating light into electric current, her pieces have for example been translated into sound or other output induced by electronic media. She uses the medium as an instrument to bring forth phenomena that would otherwise remain invisible.

Arijana has been involved in several interdisciplinary experiments and led her own research project Occular Witness at the Interactive Institute. This resulted in a book (Occular Witness, Glänta produktion)and an exhibition showing experiments with light and the mechanical gaze as it is extended through technology. By using concepts that arise from physics and optics she has found ways of observing her surroundings that bring out and challenge both the physical and social norms of human vision and understanding. She has studied the scientific perspective, with its seemingly objective and emotionally detached language, and used it as a method and means of expression.

Most recent exhibitions include Ars Electronica in Linz (06), Färgfabriken in Stockholm (06) Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde(05), ICA in London (05).

arijana@tele2.se

http://www.arijana.net