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Hold the Door: Radical Contemporary Women Printers

Vida Sačić

About the Artist

Artist Statement

I explore identity, immigration, and labor via the printed word. My prints—made using typographic relief processes: printing plates, wood, and metal type—are largely abstract and occasionally accompanied by assemblages of tools and sculptures.

I grew up in Croatia during the wars of the 1990s. From an early age, I have written original story fragments and gathered historical narratives from that region. I began printing them in various opacities and transparencies to highlight and obscure individual words, mimicking the ability of language to both identify and impede understanding.

Visually, my work challenges the rigid nature of the exacting equipment designed for precision printing. The organic compositions capture gestures of fluidity and motion. By resisting control over the outcome, I create pathways for exploration through processes of layering, repetition, and experimental inking within rigid structures, often in response to the history of the tools that I am using. I create new type and fashion printing plates using discarded materials to print alongside twentieth-century matrices used to create documents, subverting their usage by literally turning them on the head. 

As a part of my artistic practice, I am a writer and a sort of an archivist in that I preserve historical tools and narratives; but above all, I am a printer. Printing was the medium that defined and disseminated knowledge until the late twentieth century. As such, it offers a unique ability to question singular cultural narratives and examine how they were disseminated.

 

photo of artist, Jennifer Graves in front of her work

Artist:

Vida Sačić

Social media: @vidasacic

Website: vidasacic.com

Exhibition

Hold the Door: Radical Contemporary Women Printers

Bio:

Vida Sačić is a Chicago-based artist and typographer. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University Bloomington in 2010. She has been the Artist-in-Residence at The Penland School of Craft and The Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago. She has exhibited in dozens of solo and group exhibitions across the United States and Europe, including at DeVos Art Museum in Michigan and The Center for Book Arts in New York City. Sačić is Professor in the Art + Design department at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

 

This collagraph monoprint of an American army uniform, adorned with patches of both Korean and U.S. flags, serves as a poignant reflection on identity and the visible traces of American influence on South Korea’s history. It also speaks to my own experience growing up as a first-generation, gay Korean immigrant.

DOOR
Letterpress print, edition of 3
58” x 40”
2025

This print reveals a layered composition of undergarments—an intimate counterpoint to the visible uniform. Through graphite transfers and pressure printing, the work exposes the concealed labor and vulnerability beneath the surface of military presentation. Referencing the hidden layers of identity, gender, and desire, it reflects the internal contradictions of growing up queer within hypermasculine, militarized environments.

Transitory
(LiberSPACE Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia)
Letterpress print and screenprint
Installation, dimensions variable
2025

This print features a miniature doll-sized military uniform suspended in a dreamlike void. Set against a backdrop of ink-stained balloon explosions, it evokes a surreal battlefield where innocence, violence, and nostalgia intermingle. The disembodied figure hovers—caught between weightlessness and detonation, suggesting the emotional dissociation of growing up under the shadow of war.

Wavelength
(Flora Gallery, Dubrovnik, Croatia)
Letterpress print and screenprint
Installation, dimensions variable
2024

Wavelength
(Flora Gallery, Dubrovnik, Croatia)
Letterpress print and screenprint
Installation, dimensions variable
2024

Here, Where?
(Riverside Arts Center, Riverside, IL)
Letterpress print and screenprint
Installation, dimensions variable
2024

This print captures the invisible yet mounting pressures of war through the use of folded latex balloons as a matrix. As the forms explode under compression, ink is pushed outward—leaving behind magnified traces that resemble impact craters, shrapnel, or bursts. The resulting image becomes a symbolic battlefield, where material rupture echoes psychological fracture. The folds, the pressure, and the stains collectively visualize the unseen force of trauma and its imprint on both body and memory.

Home, Body, Land
(Newberry Library, Chicago, IL)
Letterpress print, edition of 4 each
58” x 40” each
2022

I (Don’t) Intend To Come Back
(Lađa X, Dubrovnik, Croatia)
Digitally reproduced letterpress prints, artist book
Artist book A3 size, Installation, dimensions variable
2025

Mi Igramo (Eng. We Play Soccer, Soccer Plays Us)
(Public Works Gallery, Chicago, IL)
Acrylic paint mural
Site specific
2022/23

Factory Stories
(Artist Studio, Mana Contemporary)
10 Letterpress prints with title pages, custom handmade box
18.875” x 12.5″ x 0.5”
2020

Factory Stories
(Artist Studio, Mana Contemporary)
10 Letterpress prints with title pages, custom handmade box
18.875” x 12.5″ x 0.5”
2020