After creating the original Fierce Women deck in 2018, our partner organization Common Zone (Croatia) couldn’t wait to start working on additional card decks and promote even more amazing women and role models. Project Women on Women (WOW), that we are implementing with them and City of Women (Slovenia), Tiiiit! Inc. (North Macedonia), and Outlandish Theatre Platform (Ireland), aims to exactly that - to give visibility to female role models, and herstories of inspirational women that change our societies for the better - so it gave us great joy to work on the first Fierce Women expansion deck together.
We invited artists from all over Europe to help us present 30 Fierce Women from Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, and Ireland. More than 300 artists from 27 countries in Europe sent us the most amazing artworks.
We had a lovely June receiving these creative illustrations, but later came the hard part, choosing only 15 artists whose artworks are going to be included in Fierce Women WOW Cards deck. After hours of Zoom meetings and going through all applications repeatedly we selected a team of artists that will make each card of Fierce Women WOW Cards expansion a genuine work of art.
♥ We would like to thank everyone who responded to our Call for artists, and invite you to meet the contest winners and their work ♥
♦ Ana Lucija Šarić ♦ Ana Salopek ♦ Chiara Tallarini ♦ Eimear McNally ♦ Helena Nemec ♦ Nazli Karaturna ♦ Polona Drašler ♦ Rina Barbarić ♦ Samira Kentrić ♦ Sindy Čolić ♦ Tamara Zabaznoska ♦ Tea Jurišić ♦ Tina Vukasović Đaković ♦ Xueh Magrini Troll ♦ Zoran Cardula ♦
ANA LUCIJA ŠARIĆ
Ana Lucija Šarić is a young artist from Ljubljana, Slovenia, working in the field of graphic design, illustration, and photography. Her passion for visual art led her to leave her studies at the Faculty of Mathematics to study graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She is very fond of analogue artistic media and practices - drawing, graphic printing, and analogue photography. In any technique she is working she aims to find harmony between shapes and colors. Since 2014 she has presented her works at many exhibitions and worked as a graphic designer, designing posters, books, magazines, brochures etc.
She applied to our call for artists with the illustration of Vita Zupančič, a teacher in the field of surdo pedagogy, committed to teach deaf children and youth. “I have chosen to present her because I could not find much about her, but I started to imagine how her work might have looked and what were the circumstances for women teachers at the end of 19th and beginning of the 20th century. I found only one photo of her, and I started to imagine her surrounded by children to whom she transmitted knowledge and skills to build their lives in the world adjusted mostly to healthy individuals without any disabilities, in times when being deaf was a greater stigma.”
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Vita Zupančič and Alojzija Štebi.
Follow her on Instagram.
ANA SALOPEK
Ana Salopek is an artist from Ogulin, Croatia, but she considers the Universe her home. As a proud mum of a five-year-old girl, she occasionally borrows daughter's world view whereby she is enlightened on what truly matters in life. She creates using digital techniques because they allow her more freedom and believes that during the night her legs lengthen as a giraffe’s neck and then she can reach the stars.
She submitted Diana Budisavljević, Marta Paulin Schmidt-Brina and Nan Joyce, and here is why. “I believe in the human race. I believe in life. I believe in humanity. I believe that we all know that there is only one race - human and that we all deserve the same - happiness, love, and the right to a fulfilled joyful life. Diana, Marta and Nan each represent my beliefs in their own way and in their struggles. Each of them shook, at least for a moment, those who watched from the sidelines.”
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Diana Budisavljević and Nan Joyce.
Follow her on Instagram and Facebook, and take a look at her website.
CHIARA TALLARINI
Chiara Tallarini is an illustrator and graphic designer from Rome, Italy, currently living in a beach town on the West coast of Ireland. “I love bold colors, simple shapes and playful ideas. The favorite subjects of my illustrations are women that I represent in their everyday lives with a touch of humor”, she says.
She sent us the illustrations of Nan Joyce who struck her for “her strength and the passion and dignity through which she expressed the needs of the Traveller community in Ireland”, and Lyra McKee who she admired “for her talent, her wit and the commitment and devotion to the causes of women reproductive rights (during the referendum to repeal the 8th amendment) and the LGBTQ+ community in Ireland”.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Lyra McKee and Kathleen Lynn.
Follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
EIMEAR MCNALLY
Eimear McNally is a live illustrator, visual facilitator, and a host of creative engagement processes from Dundalk, Ireland. She likes to work large scale.
For our WOW Cards contest she submitted an illustration of Christine Buckley. “I chose Christine Buckley because she is Irish like me and I feel very strongly about the way women have been treated in Irish history. Stories of women affected by the oppressive regime of the Catholic Church in Ireland really resonate with me as someone who was raised Catholic and then rejected that faith. Also, on a purely aesthetic level I like Christine Buckley’s face, she has a lot of character and a hint of glamour.”
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Christine Buckley and Estella Solomons.
Check out her website, and follow her on Instagram.
HELENA NEMEC
Helena Nemec is a young illustrator and a graphic designer from Zagreb, Croatia. She has a BA in visual communications from the School of Design at Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb, and she graduated at ESAD in Portugal. She loves to draw, and is very interested in animation, graphic novels and street art.
She responded to our call with an illustration of Angela Piskernik. Slovenian botanist won her over with her versatility and she connected with her on a personal level as a nature and bird enthusiast.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Anglea Piskernik and Nuala O’Faolain.
Follow her on Instagram.
NAZLI KARATURNA
Nazli Karaturna, a young artist from Antalya, Turkey. She is studying Print Arts at Eskişehir Anadolu University in Turkey since 2017. “My illustrations’ characters often are centered on woman and their stories: their fears, desires, rebellion, and ultimately power”, she says.
She applied to our call for artists with the illustration of Nakie Bajram. “I felt immediately drawn to her. Her life story affected me not only because of her forward-thinking attitude, but I found a strong, direct relation to her. Born in the same country, I unfortunately know all too much how women continue to have the same concerns for their education, economic independence, security, position in society, and outlook for our futures”, she told us, concluding that her goal was to show the strengths of the individual, and help and inspire just as Nakie did.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Nakie Bajram and Rajna Aleksova.
Follow her on Instagram.
POLONA DRAŠLER
Polona Drašler, a young artist from Slovenia (Koper), studied graphic and interactive design in Ljubljana and Stockholm. For the past few years, she has been travelling and working abroad as an au pair and tourist family entertainer, and now back in Slovenia, she is building her creative career.
Our call inspired her to illustrate Anglea Piskernik, Vita Zupančič and Vida Tomšič. Polona told us why Tomšič was one of the women she chose to illustrate. “I think her work with the program of woman's emancipation was really important and necessary that today we, as women, have better opportunities.”
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Vida Tomšič and Mara Bešter.
Follow her on Instagram and Behance.
RINA BARBARIĆ
Rina Barbarić is a young graphic designer and illustrator working between Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Rijeka. She participated in various projects during her studies, but her artistic style developed more seriously while working in the "Aitor Throup studio" in London, studio "Kuna Zlatica" and collaborating on independent projects with Vox Feminae team. She is currently freelancing and working on new ideas in the field of visual arts. You can find Rina’s illustration in original Fierce Women deck too, but for the expansion pack she chose a totally different style and blown us away.
She applied with the illustration of Edita Schubert saying that the concept of her portrayal of Fierce Women is to emphasize the characteristics and symbols of their success instead of focusing their beauty. “In Edita’s case, I symbolically place her characteristic graphic element and a brush as a tool in her work.”
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Edita Schubert and Vera Vesković Vangeli.
Follow her on Instagram.
SAMIRA KENTRIĆ
Samira Kentrić has since 1999 worked in arts, contributing illustrations to leading Slovenian newspapers, creating book covers and illustrations for books. She specializes in visual works that comment on social and intimate dramas of her time. Her main interests are stories of people in distress due to global politics and silly traditions, which still govern our contemporary lives. She published three graphic novels Balkanalije (2015), Pismo Adni (2016) and Adna (2020), and exhibited her works in solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad.
She applied with an illustration of Zofka Kveder, proclaiming “Fierce before fear!”.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Dušana Šantel Kanoni and Marta Paulin Schmidt - Brina.
Check out her website and follow her on Instagram.
SINDY ČOLIĆ
Sindy Čolić is a young artist from Croatia, currently based in Berlin, Germany. She is a political scientist, but since art is way cooler than politics, she decided to develop her creative side and became a self-taught artist.
With the Ascendant in Libra, she said she couldn’t decide which of the 30 fierce women to illustrate for our contest, so she let a random generator to make the decision. She sent us the illustrations of Dragojla Jarnević, Edita Schubert and Zofka Kveder.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Dragojla Jarnević and Zofka Kveder.
Follow her on Instagram.
TAMARA ZABAZNOSKA
Skopje (North Macedonia) based architect and interdisciplinary artist. Tamara Zabaznoska works in different fields, from nail and string art on medium density fireboards to illustration for different purposes. Her work stands for a minimal and clear yet dense visual representation and has been shown in group and solo exhibitions.
As an architect she has been amazed by the strong and clean expression of forms in works of both fierce women she chose to represent. Mimoza Nestorova-Tomić’s portrait is “made out of the rectangle form she has used in repetition in one of her most famous works - fashion house Beko", and Iskra Grabul’s out of forms that can be found in the project for the Makedonium.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Mimoza Nestorova-Tomić and Iskra Grabul.
Follow her on Instagram.
TEA JURIŠIĆ
Tea Jurišić was born in Munich, Germany, but moved to Croatia at an early age. She is an illustrator, painter, and visual artist in love with ink, watercolor and Frank Zappa. She graduated in visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Tea created various murals in Croatia, Italy, and Norway, had 8 solo exhibitions in Croatia and abroad since 2017, and her works were published in Booooooom, Komikaze and Fressh magazine. She loves to explore new expressions in a comical and surreal way.
Tea submitted 3 illustrations of fierce women she connected to the most – Edita Schubert, Maude Delap and Nasta Rojc. Out of those three she emphasizes that she found herself most in Nasta Rojc, “a strong woman who defied the established norms of her time”. “As a child I was fascinated by horses, their anatomy and movement, and this led me to display them through the years of childhood and adolescence in thousands of poses, shapes and situations. Nasta also passionately loved horses, which she often depicted in the works. Also, I appreciate the traditional work of the painter, and in the display I want to stick to the same expression, because I find that traditional work is palpable, fragrant and inimitable, as opposed to digital, which always seems to be there just seemingly, hovering between me and the device.”
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Nasta Rojc and Giuseppina Martinuzzi.
Follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
TINA VUKASOVIĆ ĐAKOVIĆ
Tina Vukasović Đaković is a visual artist and curator from Split, Croatia. In 2013 she got an MA degree in Painting in Arts academy University of Split. She participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Croatia and abroad.
For our WOW Cards contest she submitted Edita Schubert, Diana Budisavljević and Maude Delap. She wasn’t familiar with Irish marine biologist, but Delap’s story and dedication won her over.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Maude Delap and Vinka Bulić.
Follow her on Instagram.
XUEH MAGRINI TROLL
Xueh Magrini Troll belongs to the third generation of female artists in her family. She studied fine arts at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, illustration at Escuela de arte diez in Madrid and visual communication at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. Since 2009 she lives in Berlin where she regularly illustrates for German newspapers like Die Taz, Junge Welt and Missy magazine. Drawing is her way of understanding the world around her and incidentally discovering herself. Feminism, diversity, cultural clashes, migration crisis and the human condition in general are part of the subjects that appear in her work out of a desire of observe what surrounds her, quite often with a humorous touch.
She applied to our contest with the illustrations of Maude Delap and Rosa Plaveva. “When I saw the picture of Rosa Plaveva, I was immediately strongly attracted to her, I thought: What a cool looking woman! I consider myself a feminist and I appreciate a lot the fights for equality, empowerment, and emancipation that women in the past had to go through to open the path for us. I thought it was a really powerful message she gave with her esthetic, and I wanted to show how powerful she looked in her pants, but at the same time how she was like a Home, a caring institution for women”, she said.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include her Rosa Plaveva and Ljiljana Dirjan.
Follow her on Instagram.
ZORAN CARDULA
Electrical Engineer with more than 25 years of experience as an artist and graphic designer. Zoran Cardula is based in Skopje, North Macedonia, and works as a freelancer and poster design tutor at two educational centers. His work is most significantly influenced by Russian Constructivism and Yugoslavian Design. His most notable design projects are 300+ redesigns of famous Yugoslavian posters, Illustrations of Yugoslavian WWII Brutalist Monuments, Comic Book Heroes in Soviet Style, Digital Ink Female portraits, and “Gush i Bac” - a graphic novel with illustrations of the words of his daughter with autism.
In his signature style, Zoran depicted 7 fierce women, all whose life and work were familiar to him - Kata Pejnović, Diana Budisavljević, Rosa Plaveva, Lydia Sklevicky, Nakie Bajram, Iskra Grabul and Mimoza Nestorova-Tomić.
Fierce Women WOW Cards will include his Kata Pejnović and Lydia Sklevicky.
Follow him on Instagram.
The project Women on Women is supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission.
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