Maja Strgar Kurečić

Maja Strgar Kurečić (Zagreb, 1972) is a visual artist, photographer, and Full Professor at the Faculty of Graphic Arts, University of Zagreb, where she teaches courses in photography, digital image processing, and color reproduction. She holds a doctorate in the field of digital photography, and her scholarly and pedagogical work combines technological precision with an enduring exploration of visual language. She is the author and co-author of numerous scientific papers, book chapters, and professional publications on photography, color management, and contemporary imaging media, and has mentored generations of students now active on the Croatian and international visual arts scene. After many years working in documentary, portrait, and commercial photography, she gradually developed her own artistic voice within conceptual and abstract photography. In her work, photography ceases to be a mere record of reality and becomes a process — an investigation into the relationships between perception, light, time, and matter. Using simple, almost laboratory-like procedures, the artist combines water, pigment, and light in a small glass vessel and captures the short-lived structures that emerge and dissolve in an instant. The resulting images resemble planets, nebulae, microscopic specimens, or inner landscapes — fragments of unseen worlds in which analytical reflection meets intuitive gesture. Her best-known cycles, Other Worlds (2015–2018) and Landscapes of Escape (2017–2019), form a continuous arc from the study of perception and creative play toward visual meditation. Her works have been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad, included in international selections, catalogues, and art collections, and have received multiple awards. Alongside her artistic practice she is active as a lecturer, reviewer, and participant at scientific conferences, tirelessly exploring how the contemporary photographic medium can become a space of reflection, silence, and inner freedom.