My most recent series, ELEMENTARZ (2010), tracks the reach of the U.S. auto industry (stretching from Detroit to California to Eastern Europe, where my father implemented new industrial plants) while depicting the efforts at communication between engineer father and artist daughter. Both images and excerpts of conversation allude to fractured ideologies of individual worth, religion and family, while signs of car culture mixed with evidence of economic plight recur. A mood of longing pervades ELEMENTARZ, coupled with absentminded dreaming, characteristic of both Eastern European immigrants and African Americans of the Great Migration. Karlic is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship 2011 which will enable her to continue to further investigate the representation of American culture, more specifically immigrant emplacement and diasporic existence surrounding the auto industry. She holds a BFA in Photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design 2005 and a MFA in Photography and Media from the California Institute of Arts 2010
Evolving from a series of road trips along the Northern American freeway system and following one man's return to Poland, ELEMENTARZ captures America’s nostalgia for the automobile and it's undeniable industrial collapse. The photographs are large format color images, richly descriptive of an eclectic mix of individuals, landscapes, and interiors encountered during my travels. Sensuous in detail and raw in subject, the book carries a mood of loneliness and longing, but also reverie: a mood that is familiar for many immigrants from Eastern Europe.