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Meet the Artists

Daniella Repas

— Intermedia Major —

Since leaving her native, war-torn Bosnia twelve years ago, Daniela Repas has gained a prestigious scholarship, an important award — and a finely honed sense of gratitude.

Sitting in Urban Grind coffeehouse on a warm Friday afternoon, Repas sips an iced chai tea and remembers how painful it was to leave her home country eleven years ago. “But such great things have happened to me since then that I consider myself one of the luckiest people I know,” she says. “I am reminded all the time how fortunate I am to be here and be doing what I love.”

Repas calls it luck. Those who’ve watched her bloom into a formidable multimedia artist during her three years at PNCA would call it an unbridled talent and a fearless pursuit of truth. Since being named a Dorothy Lemelson Scholar in 2004, for which she received a full-paid, four-year scholarship to the College, Repas has poured her heart and soul into an Intermedia major. At Portland’s 2007 Platform International Animation Festival, she was awarded the prize for Best Installation in Animation for her stunning work, “Reduced Conception,” a piece that used video and flickering light on 82 mounted charcoal drawings to create the illusion of linear narrative.

Reduced Conception, 2007

Repas says installation is the ideal medium for the stories she wants to tell. It’s all about space, audio, images, and the relationship between them, she explains. “I can bring in more of myself and make the experience more emotionally complete,” she says. “It’s inspiring to me how PNCA and professors like Linda Kliewer and Rose Bond are really embracing this new movement in intermedia art. For me, it’s changed my life.”

Repas, 27, grew up in Tuvla, Bosnia, in a tight-knit, middle-class family who all encouraged her artistic nature. It was this support, she says, that saw her through the dark times of her adolescence. “We learned to be very flexible,” she says. “If we could hear fighting at the border, then we wouldn’t go on a picnic. If there wasn’t any, we’d go have fun. You learned to cope.”

When she was fifteen, Repas was forced to leave Bosnia amid the ethnic cleansing that ravaged the Balkans, pushing her family and many other mixed-ethnicity refugees into neighboring Croatia. She made her way through Switzerland, Arizona, and Denver,
where she laid down her artistic roots and started a gallery with her boyfriend, Sonny. Eventually, the couple felt the pull to move West. “I’d never been to Portland, but he said we’d be close to the ocean, so that was enough for me,” says Repas, beaming. Here, she discovered PNCA and took her artistic practice to the next level.

Repas says she sometimes struggles with the notion of a career in art. What am I doing being an artist, she asks herself, when there are starving people out there who need help? “But I’ve realized, art is our weapon against evil and sadness,” she says. “The small things we do every day can make a difference and art is no different. I have to believe this is true.”