MOON Martina Zelenika (1978, Croatia) is an ultra-contemporary interdisciplinary artist who uses an innovative and alchemical approach to creating works of art. She combines traditional techniques and state-of-the-art digital technologies. Her artistic central motif and theme is freedom in the post-humanism era. Although she prefers traditional drawing, she also uses sonification of different kinds of data and images. Martina is the author of highly produced artwork created by using time-based media. In her collaboration with Ruđer Bošković Institute, she worked on obtaining x-ray analyses of minerals to create artwork with sound. She developed a unique technique of meditative drawing called Meta Signal Sonar System (2017), which remains present in the further development of her artwork.
Martina graduated in 2001 from the Printmaking art Department of the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Zagreb. She took her M.F.A. in the area of Video-New media at the Academy of Visual Art and Design of Ljubljana University in 2006. Well-regarded grants and several scholarships have been awarded to Martina. She has participated in international conferences dedicated to digital and multimedia Art: RE: SOUND – the 8th International Conference for Histories of Media Arts 2019 at Aalborg Denmark; ZIP-SCENE Budapest Hungary; RIXC Art SciFestival, Riga Latvia Etc. Zelenika has 19 solo exhibitions and participated at new media festivals and international shows in Austria, South Korea, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, Latvia Etc. The artist MOON Martina Zelenika is a member of the ADA-the Archive of Digital Art – a database of virtual Art, and SALOON – The network for Women of Berlin’s art scene in 2020. She gladly passes her knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm to students at Algebra University College Zagreb, where she works as a Lecturer – in the interdisciplinary field of Art in the Department of Digital Art since the fall of 2021. She lives and works in Zagreb.
M A N I F E S T O
As a species, we have lost our connexion to nature, and in so doing, to ourselves. We have forgotten that we are multidimensional beings to give in to strictly dual thinking: nature versus culture, science versus faith, good versus bad, love versus evil, light versus darkness.
Thinking that we are not part of nature, but above it, or lost in translation, we lose touch with the true essence of existence. And since we do not feel bound by natural (God’s) rules, we feel compelled to destroy the habitat, guided solely by our thirst for power and comfort. If we continue down this path, humanity will fail as some DNA experiment.
My name is MOON Martina Zelenika. I am an artist, orbiting around society just as the moon orbits around the earth. My mission is to inspire you with different perspectives and aesthetics. Art can be the medicine for our troubled times.
I refuse to be guided by my ego, or a bogus sense of self-importance. Through my art, I am striving to reach true empathy never forgetting the fragility of existence. I create freely. Yet I am constantly questioning, falling in dark depths, rising through the eternal joy of a loving heart.
Journey with me into the unknown, where questions are our beacons.
Can you feel the world?
Art is about creating interactions, not objects. I am not interested in aesthetics, in recognizable shapes, in being part of a school. What I am striving to achieve is a deep interconnection between the audience and positive world energies.
This is why I do not limit my practice to a specific medium, even though drawing is my preferred mode of expression. When I am drawing, my entire body is in movement, channeling the energy of the universe into concentric, shadowed, ellipses.
I started this research in 2017 with META_SIGNAL SONAR SYSTEM (or MSSS), and it keeps supporting me to this day, as I delve deeper into the solar system, hopping for the better future with my latest work.
This meditative drawing forms its own language, fusing phonograms and logograms. It serves as a springboard to the original language, shared by all sentient beings. The language of vibration.
I pursued this exploration of the universal language of sound with 6th SENSE, another installation in the artistic research project cycle META_SIGNAL SONAR SYSTEM. Combining collage and augmented reality, the project allows the audience not only to experience interactive sounds and visuals in real time, but also to interact with them. Sounds is a primal form of communication, and I believe it can be akin to telepathy.
I explore it further in my ongoing performative series RECEPTILIUM. As I am engaged in drawing, sensors capture brainwaves and hand motion data. This “raw” data is then turned into sound, interacting with generative visuals.
I invite the audience to meditate with me, to tap into the energy of the cosmos. Only then can we unite and rise above the challenges confronting humanity today.
This is how I practice politics: not by division, but by integration.
Can you sense the energy from the highest peak to the smallest rock?
As everything is connected, everything speaks. All we have to do is listen.
In my work, I constantly return to the symbol of the mountain as a place that connects the earth and the sky, the beauty that leaves me breathless.
In INTROVERSION (2019), I filmed Croatia’s Mount Velebit upside-down. The sky becomes a pink prairie, the mountain slopes merge into the stars. The experience is elating, but do not let it fool you: what I am calling for is not simply a dream-like experience of transcendence, but a realization of how the pervasive panopticon philosophy and inflation of information in our lives prevent us from going inward in our own deserts.
I returned to Mountain Velebit for my debut experimental short documentary MOUNTAIN (2019). Nature has power of creation and destruction but still is very humble.
Can you welcome what is not human into your consciousness?
Just as my work is transdisciplinary, my approach is multi-faceted. Research, testing, learning are valuable ways to achieve knowledge and progress.
In the another artistic research project cycle named “Metaprogramming Of The Human Algorithm” (or MOTHA) and the artwork LA PETITE MORT (2019), I use augmented reality technology to bring you closer to the experience achieved for the purpose of survival. As visitors walk towards elliptical drawings, they are presented with an extra layer of reality. Alchemy and science merge into art.
For my series NEW EUROPE (2017), I partnered with the Department of materials physics, Laboratory for molecular physics and synthesis of new materials at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb Croatia to scan minerals using quantum mecanics. I included this scientific fact – the properties of metals in minerals such as black sphalerite, silver galena and gold pyrite to create music and geomorphic reliefs.
From vibrations to data, drawing to video, science to emotion… we have come full circle. Just like the moon.
Are you ready to fly?
The future is speculative, but humans can unite. I hope this MOON journey brought you… precisely that, hope. Hope in a regenerative earth, hope in a gentler humanity. Will you join me in generating a positive world frequency?
the artist MOON Martina Zelenika © 2023
2023 © MOON Martina Zelenika