A journey that started with textiles, passed through screens, and finally settled in the quiet resistance of fired clay. Along the way, the same questions kept coming back — about fragility, memory, and the way a form completes itself only in someone else's looking.
Nikolina Rodić Grgac (b. 1975, Sarajevo) began her artistic journey in the fashion industry, where working with textile materials first awakened her sensitivity to texture, form, and materiality. From the tactile world of textiles, she moved into digital design, working on mobile and web applications.
In search of a more permanent and tangible artistic language, she graduated in 2017 from the Public Open University Zagreb, Department of Ceramics, Glass and Porcelain, and began experimenting with clay and porcelain in combination with other materials. Her work is deeply inspired by nature and lace, whose fragility she seeks to preserve in the enduring medium of clay.
Guided by the thought that “the world is in the eyes of the observer,” Nikolina sees each artwork as becoming complete only through the presence and perception of the viewer.
Alongside lace and nature, she also draws inspiration from human relationships and interpersonal exchange. These themes are often expressed through decorated face silhouettes that depict thoughts as the starting point of communication.
Silhouettes — a gathering · thoughts as the starting point of exchange
Nikolina presented her work publicly for the first time in 2017 at her solo exhibition Fragility for Eternity in Brno, Czech Republic. Since then, she has exhibited regularly and participated in juried group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad.
In 2021, driven by a desire to make ceramic exhibitions more accessible to a wider audience, she launched Fine Art Depo, a website dedicated to publishing digitized exhibition content.
Nikolina creates sculptures and installations, most often intended for wall or table display. She is a member of ULUPUH — the Croatian Association of Artists of Applied Arts — as well as a member and president of the ceramic association Glineraj. She lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia — making work that keeps asking how something as delicate as lace can be carried, unbroken, into stone.
