Aleksandra Orlić: "Barcelona is the perfect generator of images"

Croatian Aleksandra Orlić was one of the first authors to hold a literary residency at the MUHBA Vil·la Joana this 2023. She was there from the 17th of April to the 8^th of May. The goal: to work on her new book Black Sun, a collection of poetry and short stories around the idea of lost memories, rooted in the author’s father’s trip to Barcelona before she was born.

Orlić’s relationship with the Catalan capital, therefore, goes back a long way. In fact, she has published a book entitled Two Nights in Barcelona (2018), in which she started from the premise that the city amplified the intense emotions of the protagonist. And for the Croatian writer and journalist, Barcelona –which she defines as “one of the most picturesque and vibrant cities in the world”– is “the perfect generator of images, not only externally, but also internally”. Orlić has even developed a theory about why Spain is the birthplace of certain names in art: “The sun so strong casts powerful shadows that often create a parallel reality, and maybe that’s why so many significant artists emerged from here, artists who have dissociated themselves from figurative representation, such as Picasso, Goya, Dalí, Buñuel or La Fura dels Baus”. And she explains to us that her Black Sun project, a book of poems with photographs, “is precisely based on the discovery of the hidden, parallel and perhaps invisible world of Barcelona: people who live on the margins, immigrants, encounters with Doppelgangers who approach to you in the contrast of light…”.

In this same sense, she evaluates the literary residence in Vil·la Joana very positively: “It awakened my poetic creation, intensifying the feelings and strengthening the images, and it also accelerated the creative process. It revealed to me unknown scenes of Barcelona and, most importantly, it connected me to other authors, writers, translators and linguists.” One of them was the translator Irina Markova, who precisely translated her book Two Nights in Barcelona into Ukrainian. “I feel enriched by Irina’s interpretation and deep understanding of the book, who compared it to Impressionist painting.” The fact that Vil·la Joana is “surrounded by impressive nature” and at the same time so close to the “fiery crucible that embodies real life” also stands out from the residence. “It is precisely from this interaction that the most creative works are born”, considers Orlić.

The Croatian author published her fifth book, Acqua Alta, this August and plans to finish Black Sun in the fall.

More information about the residences at MUHBA Vil·la Joana, on this link.