Dapo forges art from tragedy

Photo by Dennis Burnett
Edna Dapo examines themes of tragedy and redemption in her paintings, on display at Alexander Hall.

By: Monique Bos

Published: Friday, October 6, 2006

Edna Dapo, a Master of Fine Arts candidate in painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design, has traveled great distances — literally — in pursuit of artistic training.

Dapo was born and raised in the Croatian city of Mostar. Although she grew up behind the Iron Curtain, she said her childhood didn’t fit the American stereotype of what life was like under Communism.

“The country where I lived was a very peaceful, very normal European nation,” she said. “It was the soft side of the Iron Curtain. I grew up with American culture, watched a ton of movies, listened to American music, read Western books and saw Western art.”

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, religious and ethnic factions in the area began to fight over differences that, in some cases, originated centuries ago.

“We lived in an area that was very multicultural and had populations from the three major religions,” she explained. “We had Croatians, who are mostly Catholics, based in the Western tradition; Serbians, who are usually Russian Orthodox; and Bosnian Muslims. When the Turks tried to get these territories in the 1400s, they came all the way to Vienna. The Croatians stopped their advance, and the Turks stayed there, started mingling with the people who were living around them, and made those people take their religion. That’s really where the Bosnian Muslims came from. But religion was the only thing that differentiated us.”

Referencing the 1914 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Bosnia — the event that precipitated World War I — Dapo said she believes her homeland sometimes has served as a stage on which larger nations play out their conflicts.

“The [recent] war was fought sort of because of religion, but mostly for money and power,” she said. “Croatia is on the southeastern coast of Europe, kind of in the center. It feels like a little playground for the big powers.”

However, even after fighting broke out in other parts of the region, including her father’s hometown of Dubrovnik, Dapo said she and her family didn’t believe the violence would reach Mostar.

“The population was basically made up of 30 percent Catholics, 30 percent Orthodox and 30 percent Muslims,” she explained. “Nobody believed the war was going to happen there.”

When she was 14 years old, that changed virtually overnight.

“One weekend, all the Serbians in the whole city just left. I went to school with these people; these are neighbors,” she said. “Then the Yugoslavian national army, which was really in the hands of the Serbians, climbed the mountains that surround Mostar. They said it was a military exercise, but then they started bombing us. We were basically under siege.”

For the next two years, Dapo and her family lived with the bombardment, rarely venturing more than a half-mile beyond their apartment building.

“There would be shooting and bombs sometimes, then peace,” she said. “We never knew what was going to happen, never knew whether we would have electricity … We even slept in the stairs for two months, because the stairs were the most protected part of the building.”

In these extreme circumstances, people banded together to survive.

“All the people who were left in the building developed a great community,” she said. “One family had a gas oven, which they put downstairs in the basement so everyone could use it when the electricity was out.”

She added, “In a tragedy, you all stick together and try to heal each other.”

After two years, she and her family managed to leave Mostar and went to Dubrovnik, where the fighting had stopped. Dapo experienced a sense of displacement, but also began her artistic training.

“For me, I don’t have a city or a home anymore. Everyone left,” she said. “Dubrovnik became my second home; my father’s roots were there. I became an artist there.”

She attended an arts-centered high school, which provided rigorous classical training as well as artistic instruction.

“We were brought up like we were going to be artists,” she said. “We had five to six hours a day of regular classes, such as English, Italian, math and history, and five hours a day of art classes. It was very strict training.”

After graduating, she decided to pursue her artistic education outside of Croatia, rather than at the country’s leading art academy in Zagreb.

“That was my breakthrough,” she said. “That’s really why I wanted to leave the country. In a way, I was lucky I did not end up there. I always thought the school was very traditional, and it limited your imagination. I wanted to go to the Western world, where it seemed there was more freedom.”

At the time, her oldest brother was living in Sweden.

“I decided I was going to go there,” she said. “I always had curiosity about other people, cultures, art — everything going on in the world. I felt like there was something going on somewhere else, and I needed to be part of it.”

Without a visa allowing entry into Sweden, Dapo crossed her fingers and climbed onto a bus headed for Copenhagen, Denmark. The ferry ride from there to Sweden takes about 15 minutes, and many people commute back and forth.

“Because it’s so hectic, they don’t check everyone at customs,” she explained. “I said hello to the customs officer, walked through, and I was in Sweden.”

After a month, she decided she wanted to stay, so she had to present herself to Swedish authorities and request legal status.

“I asked for political asylum,” she said. “I had a six-hour interview with a Swedish woman, who asked about every single, minute detail. The only thing I remember about this woman is her light blue eyes, piercing through me.”

She attended an international school, where she met people from all over the world, but the cold weather and lack of sunshine dampened her spirits. In the meantime, her parents applied to emigrate to Australia, Canada or the United States. They also sought permission for Dapo and her other brother to accompany them.

“My dad called one day and said, ‘You have to be here to see an American officer in two days,’” she said. “I was suddenly leaving everything, with no goodbyes.”

In July 1998, the family moved to Phoenix, where an international agency placed them in low-income housing. All four quickly sought and found jobs working at a local hotel.

“Because my parents didn’t speak English, they had to start as dishwashers,” she said. “We changed cultures and suddenly had to start at the bottom after being middle-class. My mom is a seamstress. She later found a job in an Italian boutique, and now she speaks English with an Italian accent.”

Dapo worked full-time at a resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., while she attended classes at a community college and later at Arizona State University. After graduation, she and two friends rented a studio that they also used as an exhibition space. Knowing she wanted to pursue her painting full time, Dapo also began to work on a portfolio and graduate school applications.

“I really wanted to go to a private art school,” she said. “I liked the idea of a college devoted to art. I thought at SCAD I would find a college dedicated to students; really, I found a whole city dedicated to the college.”

She also has received satisfaction from her work as a tutor at the SCAD Drawing and Design Center, through which she assists students in foundation studies classes such as Drawing, 2-D Design and Color Theory.

“I feel a sense of accomplishment when I help someone,” she said. “It’s nice, really, to talk to any artist about what their work is and what they’re trying to do.”

In May, the college awarded Dapo, who is now in her last quarter of study, the Gulfstream Aerospace Scholarship. “It was such an honor,” she said. “I was ecstatic. It’s a fantastic opportunity, and I would encourage everyone to apply for scholarships … If SCAD sees promise in somebody, they go out of their way to support that.”

Dapo’s thesis exhibition, “Aftermath,” is now on display in Alexander Hall and is featured on the Oct. 6 gallery hop, 5-7 p.m. Her images of tragedy and reconciliation are a departure from earlier work, she said.

“My previous work used darker colors and darker themes,” she said. “I wanted to depict violence. This [‘Aftermath’] is a new idea for me, and a sort of finish to being here. I wouldn’t be able to do this show if I hadn’t done all this work previously.”

The main piece is a triptych called “Reconciled,” and Dapo credited her mother with the brighter color palette she used in the work.

“She always tells me, ‘I want you to use brighter colors,’” Dapo said. “In this show, I really know where I’m coming from and what I want to say.”