A seamless interplay of memory: interview with Susana Ljuljanovic

We visited the studio of Susana Ljuljanovic, who holds a degree in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, where she currently lives. Her practice spans installation, video, performance, painting, and sculpture. Memory, dreams, and nature in their contemplative dimension are the primary sources of inspiration for her artistic research. From this exchange emerge works that function as tools for absorption, containment, transformation, and the creation of a language that is both personal and universal, capable of resonating with the viewer. We sat down together to discuss her artistic practice and the ideas that shape her work.

The first question concerns the dimension of dreams. If we look at some of your most recent works, such as “Custodia - I dreamed of a horse with a red harness” (2025), “Čuti - I dreamt my mother was cutting my hair into two pigtails and throwing them in the trash” (2025), and “I dreamed I could make little flames come out of my hands, blue and pink” (2024), the reference to an archive of dream memories is clearly central. If we consider studies in Freudian or Jungian psychoanalysis, a (human) need emerges to rationally translate dreams, to the search for an explanation. Thinking about your work, however, I believe that Ursula K. Le Guin’s perspective on dreams is much more fitting: in the collection “Dreams must explain themselves (I sogni si spiegano da soli)” (2022), she argues that they should be experienced as intuitive guides. Le Guin invites us to abandon intellectual control in order to embrace symbolic knowledge, considering dreams as a source of creative power and imagination. How do your dreams fit into this?

Dreams have always accompanied my research. They are often one of the starting points for a work or a series of works, such as those mentioned in your question. I strongly relate, therefore, to the idea of dreams as a source of creative power. I have remembered my dreams since I was a child: some have become vivid images that frequently return to my mind. Before going to sleep, I feel curious about what I might see and experience. I usually write down and annotate my dreams upon waking, often accompanying them with drawings. What always remains most powerfully, beyond the sensations, are the images. Painting is always present in the way I read and preserve them. Often it is precisely the colors and compositions of dream images that linger, sparking a series of reflections from which I then develop my works. I think they are tools and signs that speak about ourselves; for my research, it is important that they translate into works capable of entering into relationships with others. Some dreams I consider “magical”: it has happened that I dreamt things in advance that later occurred, and sometimes I also “meet” people who are no longer alive. I find these moments both playful and intense.

Your project Čuti (from Serbian: “Hey! Listen!”), developed this year during a residency period at Parsec in Bologna, stems from a reflection on loss, memory, and objects connected to affection. When we first met, it was still in progress, and we discussed the idea of memories becoming a sort of relic when tied to objects. The project is multimedia and oscillates between analog and digital, layered in its development. I would like us to focus on the sound component, that of the voice, which is difficult to replicate in memory—especially when referring to someone who passed away before audio exchanges via WhatsApp were possible. The visual can be replicated through photography, but what about the voice? The sound?

I remember this exchange we had, and I considered it truly valuable. I believe almost everyone has experienced loss, and it was useful and interesting to reflect on what remains and what we lose, and therefore cannot replicate. In my case, there is a complete absence of the memory of my father’s voice. While only a few photographs remain, along with dreams and visual memories, the voice is gone. It has no form. Our reflection was also connected to the evolution of communication and the objects we associate with a person and their memory. Today, with tools like WhatsApp and voice messages, it is almost impossible not to have a sound archive. When it happened to me, in the early 2000s, the tools available to us were very different and limited.In the work “Čuti” I included an audio component, but it is a sound constructed through the voices of other people. It is composed of two files: the first comes from a WhatsApp chat I created with a group of friends, whom I asked to send me recordings of people reading my first and last name. The second is a layering of recordings collected during the open studio of the residency at Parsec: the people present left a trace by reading my name on site, being recorded live with the help of Marianna Murgia, a performer and artist who works with voice and sound. The sum of these audios created a sonic background that I wanted to function as a guide during the experience of the exhibition, in which my name is pronounced many times, almost always incorrectly; the intention is not didactic, but descriptive of my personal experience. This feeling of estrangement is connected, for me, to the absence of the memory of a voice, to what we lose when we lose a person. Probably the fact that sound cannot be replicated is amplified precisely by its absence, which makes what is missing even more evident.

“The three-fingered hands of the Goddess, which appear in all phases of Old Europe at the beginning of the Neolithic and survive in contemporary folklore, are in fact bird feet [...] Bird feet as the hands of the Goddess are engraved on Minoan seals and painted on Greek pottery of the Geometric and Archaic periods.” This is a short excerpt from “The Language of the Goddess” by Marija Gimbutas. It made me think of your work, of your relationship with the primordial, with the archaeological memory of matter, and of the representation of hands that recurs in your work— hands that often become gloves, containers. I really like the idea of the container as something that protects and preserves, despite the fragile material you use. While scrolling through social media, I came across a thought about how one can deal with pain —The answer was: with the hands we have always used to discover the world. I would like to ask you what relationship exists between your hands, those in your works, memory, and letting go.

Hands are one of the parts of our extremities through which we relate to the world and to things. Like fragile material—clay—they have voids, solids, and lines that bear witness to a physical memory. They are, in turn, delicate. The marks that compose them, together with fingerprints, contribute to making us unique individuals. They are also the part of ourselves we see most often and that acts as a bridge between us and the world. For me, as in the history of humanity, they are the primary creative and communicative tool. I also find prehistoric cave paintings made with hands incredibly powerful: an urgent gesture that gave rise to what we now know as the visual. I draw them very often: sometimes it is the first thing I feel compelled to do when I have a sheet of paper and a pen, like an automatic gesture.

Hands, following different trajectories, communicate in different ways and often go hand in hand with speech. Fundamental in shaping and giving form to concepts and sensations, I recognize in them a protective and containing function.

Photos by Sara Lorusso