Bio

Jelena Duma, originally from Belgrade, Serbia, is a visual artist based in both Toronto and Lisbon. With a background in mathematics, software engineering, and spiritual psychotherapy, she brings a unique perspective to her work. Jelena comes from a family of artists, curators, and art historians. She studied art and music in Belgrade and Toronto, holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, and a diploma in Spiritual Psychotherapy. Inspired by her diverse experiences, metaphysical philosophy, and minimalism, her paintings explore the connection between dreams, memory, the subconscious, and the natural world.

In Jelena’s artistic practice, her analytical skills influence her creative process, allowing her to merge logic with intuition. She experiments with different mediums and materials, including clay, fabric, and ropes, as well as painting in acrylic and oil.

Jelena has exhibited her work in Canada, Portugal, Spain, Serbia, and the United States, with her paintings featured in private collections and galleries across North America and Europe. She has been a member of Propeller Art Gallery in Toronto since 2023, where Desert Frequencies marks her second solo exhibition.

Artist Statement

Through my work, I explore the space between memory, dreams, the subconscious, and our connection to the natural world. I am interested in what remains beneath the surface of our everyday experience—the memories we carry, the images that return in dreams, and the subtle connections between our inner lives and the world around us.

My paintings often place female figures within environments that feel both familiar and imagined. Objects, landscapes, and figures become symbolic rather than purely narrative. They may suggest a memory, a relationship, a journey, or a psychological state without defining a single story. I am drawn to this ambiguity and to the way an image can feel strangely familiar even when its meaning cannot be completely explained.

My background in mathematics and software engineering continues to influence the way I approach composition, structure, and space, while my studies in spiritual psychotherapy have deepened my interest in the subconscious and metaphysical aspects of experience. My process often moves between these two ways of thinking—between logic and intuition, structure and imagination.

Across different bodies of work, my visual language changes. Water, ropes, pearls, vast landscapes, solitary figures, and objects from another time have all appeared as recurring symbols. More recently, vintage technologies and desert landscapes have become a way of exploring memory, transmission, time, and our increasingly fragile relationship with the Earth.