MARGERITA RAKIĆ Emerging From Darkness
MARGERITA RAKIĆ
Emerging From Darkness
1. 5. - 16. 5. 2026.
Exhibition Emerging From Darkness by Margerita Rakić establishes a visual and contemplative realm where the concept of beginning is viewed as a permanent tension between what has been formed and what is yet undefined. The project is related to the artist’s final project at the Rijeka Academy of Applied Arts (2022), in which she explored the relationship between chaos and creation as an artistic concept. Drawing from cosmogonic myths, systematically analyzed by Eleazar Moiseevich Meletinskii, in which chaos appears as darkness, abyss, water or formless matter, the artist translates the fundamental principles of mythological narrative into the language of art.
Rakić’s selection of mythological themes can be interpreted as a metaphor for generation of artistic ideas. Just as, in myths, the world emerges out of chaos, here the image emerges from initial indefiniteness – from a space in which a personal imaginarium is formed. The fantastical images that the mythic world is full of grant the artist freedom of interpretation. This openness enables the development of personal visual language and the transformation of motifs.
Chaos is therefore observed as prerequisite of order: a saturated state, full of potential and possibilities. The dark surface of a drawing does not appear as passive background, but as an active carrier of the painting. It has its own density and inner dynamic out of which shapes emerge.
The material itself has the main role in the articulation of this idea. In addition to enabling the precise gradation of black tones, charcoal is a material that already carries within it the idea of chaos. It is produced through a process of heating in an oxygen-starved environment, whereby organic matter is transformed into almost pure carbon. In this sense, it has already undergone a path of disintegration and transformation: from a living plant to a residue that becomes reactivated in the act of creating a painting.
The blackness of charcoal carries a two-fold meaning. It evokes depth, soil and decomposition, yet it also suggests fertility and the possibility of new beginnings. As Yi-Fu Tuan says in Topophilia, black color has different meanings in different cultures, but it is the simultaneous presence of life and death that turns it into such a powerful symbolic field.
Such relationship with the material also defines the organization of the surface. Large-format drawings unfold as dense, almost impenetrable spaces. What we might call horror vacui does not appear here as a decorative principle, but as a necessity: chaos is always full, always an overcrowded field of potential. The surface is saturated and marked by a constant interplay between disintegration and formation.
In this context, the motif of vegetation acquires a special meaning. Shrubbery, ivy and dry leaves protrude from the dark background, but remain tightly connected to it, evoking the connotations of growth, new life and fertility. Their presence implies vitality, but also transience – the process that takes place between creation and disappearance.
The artist works from concrete scenes found in nature, which she notices intuitively, guided by the atmosphere and personal impression. The selected motifs are translated into drawing through a long and deliberate process, in which their shape, structure and relationship to the space of the painting becomes thoroughly explored.
Rakić’s latest work reveals a shift in the cycle. While in the earlier drawings plants come out from the dark background, in the most recent work the approach is reversed: dark forms of the stems occupy the foreground, while the background grows lighter. This reversal marks a transition within the cycle, opening a new relationship between darkness and light, between the point of origin and that which emerges from it.
This shift further accentuates the fundamental idea of the cycle – that the relationship between the beginning and creation is continuously reconfigured. It is within this changeability that the role of the mythological imaginarium comes into focus, enabling multiple interpretations and the constant expansion of meaning.
The interaction between the beginning and the process is where the potential of these works lies. Creation becomes an open field of meanings, arising in the encounter of the painting and the gaze. The viewer has an active role here, and relies on their own imaginarium and experience. Each gaze releases new connotations, and the painting becomes a space of interpretation, encouraging us to observe it as a process that keeps unfolding.
Dora Lučić
Margerita Rakić was born in Pula in 1991. After graduating from high school, she enrolled in the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka. In 2015, she completed her studies and earned the title of Master of Applied Arts. Soon she engaged in pedagogical work and organization of educational workshops for children. In 2019, she enrolled in the graduate program in Art Education at the Rijeka Academy of Applied Arts, obtaining the title of Master of Art Education in 2022. She lives and works in Pula.
