Jelena Medić: My Interest Is the Human Being

Awakening

At her exhibition Awakening, Jelena showed us the human being as he truly is, revealing his genuine essence - a refreshing contrast to the artificial smiles that often surround us. It was precisely about the HUMAN BEING and the process of awakening that Jelena spoke.

“Everything I have done in my life has been connected to people. My interest is the human being and why we behave the way we do. I like to bring out what is real in a person, and we are real both when we are joyful and when we are sad or angry. What I dislike in photography are poses and artificiality. We live in a world where, on the enormous number of photographs we see every day on social media, people present themselves the way they want to be perceived, rather than offering their true selves. And it doesn’t matter to me whether someone is happy or sad - what matters is whether they are real. Creating something artificial can also be an art, but I am not that kind of person. I see the human being as an emotional creature,” Medić said.

Liberation

For her, photography is only a tool she uses to communicate with people - a way of exploring both others and herself through the lens of a camera.

“The photographs I like the most are the ones from which I want to remove color. It seems to me that then they become more real, because the focus is on emotion and on the human being, not on colors. Colors add decoration, and I want to free the image from that and reduce it to its essence. Even though I do not express myself through color, that does not mean my perception of the world is not very colorful,” Medić explains.

She says that she has forgiven herself for many things in life and that this brought her a sense of freedom. For her, it was liberating to realize that it is impossible to know everything.

“When we let go and allow ourselves to truly feel something with our hearts and our entire being, surrender happens - and with it, real change. I believe I have awakened, but that awakening is not final, because such a thing does not exist. Until about the age of 35, I was asleep in a deep sleep, completely within the system - what should be done, what should not, what is expected - and then certain events changed me. Through art, I healed many things, and that is why I often question how much art profits from our unhappiness. Very often, we find something that at a certain moment heals us or liberates us from something, but after some time, it may happen that the same thing that healed us now keeps us imprisoned in certain emotions or patterns of behavior, because it is difficult to let go of what once felt beneficial,” she said.

Belonging

The roots of the vision behind her exhibition Awakening go back to her childhood. Growing up, Jelena often felt that she did not quite fit anywhere. She rarely felt a sense of belonging.

Many people identify strongly with their professions or social roles, but for her, that never quite worked.

“I could never identify myself as ‘that’. People often need to belong to a certain group, but I didn’t belong to any. Later, I understood it as a kind of need for freedom. I needed other people and interactions, but I also needed to be free with them, without imposing rules or expectations. That need for a form of belonging that is free from judgment, rules, and conditions eventually led me to search for such people. Or rather - those people began appearing in my life,” Medić said.

She had a vision of bringing together highly intuitive individuals into a kind of group without strict rules or structures - a space where they could be free and recognize that others share their sensitivity and way of perceiving the world.

Surrender

“I spent the entire past year guided solely by my intuition. I did only what it told me to do, and for me, that was complete surrender. You surrender to something most people would call nonsense or superstition. I was completely irrational. I simply wanted to see what would happen if I followed my feelings entirely. Part of my mission is to let highly intuitive people know that they are not alone and that what they feel can truly work. It is not true that we must have a solution before we even try something,” she said.

For Medić, surrendering to the unknown means giving ourselves the chance to discover how we function or to discover something that might later help someone else.

“Everyone has a different gift. If this is ours, does it make sense to deny it just because the majority is rational? We constantly try to optimize ourselves, to become ‘optimal’ for everything - but if we are always optimal, when will we ever be maximal? Will we ever discover what we are capable of and what our true capacities are?”

She says that the exhibition and its outcome - the result of that surrender - brought immense joy and confirmation that intuition works.

“At the same time, I felt that my path had to move somewhere else afterward. One stage had ended, until a person reconnects with themselves again. I gained the experience that intuition works perfectly. Things are simple in their essence when we are honest with ourselves, but there is always a phase in which we wish things were not the way they are. I simply followed the feeling that told me it was time for the exhibition, and at that moment everything closed into a perfect circle - which is why the photographs were displayed on billboards,” Medić explained.

Eight Highly Sensitive People

Jelena is currently writing eight texts about eight highly sensitive individuals who will share stories about their own processes of awakening. The project will build upon the exhibition she created last year - but this time, words will accompany the images.

“In my own awakening process, it meant a lot to read the stories of other people. It made me feel less alone and gave me a sense of optimism. During awakening, the personality we once identified as ‘ourselves’ begins to fade. We fear that we are disappearing with it. When everything that once felt familiar stops working, we think we will vanish. And in a way we will - but our essence will not. That is what I want to continue exploring through this project. It is meant for people who are just entering their awakening process, and the collective consciousness has grown enough that more and more people are beginning to wake up,” Medić concluded.

• Written by: Nevena Reljić / HEDONIST
• Originally published in HEDONIST Magazine, Issue 05, 2021.