Lorette C. Luzajic – Eight Photographs

Artist’s Statement on Beauty

In Tunisia I was charmed by the Hand of Fatimah doorknockers common to the region. As I photographed the talismans, I learned they ward off the Evil Eye.

The belief in the curse of exposure to malevolent watch stretches across the Mediterranean world. I wondered if symbolic protection might decrease my own anxiety of exposure, or of the unknown, so I found an antique hand and brought it home.

Every time I glance at it, I’m reminded that looking deeper, not looking away, is the best defense we have against the things that scare us.

Lorette C. Luzajic is a Toronto-based mixed media artist and writer. She explores how many ways she can approach photography, collage, and paint by using different materials and thematic inspirations, driven by eclectic curiosity and the joy of juxtaposition. She has shown work at home at the Flying Pony Gallery, the Gladstone Hotel, the Artist Project, Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, the Spoke Club, the Ritz-Carlton,  and the Royal Ontario Museum. Her work has also been shown as a 20 foot billboard in New Orleans, in several exhibitions in the Yucatan, Mexico, and at an international artist symposium in Tunisia, where she took these photographs. Luzajic is also the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal dedicated to writing inspired by visual art. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.