Ruža Vatres is a Kitchener-Ontario resident born in 1999. Coming from an artistic family, she has spent much of her life painting and drawing. She often develops inspiration from her Balkan cultural background as well as personal family history, though some of her current artistic explorations are also leading toward synthesizing literary and visual art. Her “In the Garden” series explores specific floral motifs as metaphors for memory and change, and weaves them together with family archival images. Visual artists like Olja Ivanjicki, Petar Lubarda, and Canada’s Sadko Hadžihasanović serve as reoccurring inspirations for the aesthetic aspects of her compositions.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My work is created as a cathartic expression of my own power and autonomy within the memories of a domestic situation that was often under some siege of oppression and trauma. My scene paintings of family memories combine floral motifs, vintage bedsheets, and uncanny collage-style compositions to explore the way memory lingers or is overwritten.
My printmaking work follows a more linear narrative structure focusing on the same themes, veering on expressionism and cultural symbolism to convey the experiences of displacement.