Tanja Gacic

Born at the first twinkle of spring 1980 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia — just weeks before Tito died and a decade before the federation went up in flames of nationalism and xenophobia. Until then, society shaped my developing mind with ideals of brotherhood, freedom, hard work and hope — a rare gift compared to the bleakness of our neighbours behind Stalin’s curtain.

An 80s tomboy latchkey kid with a nerdy streak and an obsession for glam dress-up, I lived in a rich inner dreamland therapists later hinted was ADHD. As Yugoslavia gasped its last breath, I watched my childhood crack open under war. Five years later we immigrated to Auckland, New Zealand, where a modelling scout signed me while I was shopping for shoes. Australia took pity and kept me — I’d attack the runway at Fashion Week with the shameless confidence of my Tanja G alter ego, then run barefoot to salt-streaked sand, chasing fading light and seafoam.

My Empirical Life started as a creative experiment — somewhere to pin down memories, photographs of things and places that made me feel something real, a place to admit that living on your own terms is equal parts luxury and terror. Vogue Australia wandered in and stayed for eight years. Farfetch called me ambassador. Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Cartier and the rest arrived like dream guests. Yet the real current pulled deeper: the girl who couldn’t stop reading medical journals at 2am, turning her health issues and traumas into furious curiosity, refusing — however clumsily — to stay in a pretty cage.

My daughter Coco Valentine arrived and split my heart wide open with love. I survived things that don’t make the highlight reel: single motherhood, coercive control and domestic abuse, generational ghosts, saying unfashionable things out loud during the pandemic, learning the special loneliness of being the one who speaks when everyone else would rather scroll in silence. Therapy rebuilt me; evidence became my religion — too inquisitive for dogma, too old to seek permission.

These days I work both sides of the camera: photographing for fashion labels and the art world, and making limited-edition prints — experiments in fabric, light and landscape, hand-pulled on cotton rag in editions of fifty.

Mostly, I want to laugh at the absurdity of the 21st century, my own contradictions included — not curate a flawless facade. Weak for vintage fashion, natural wine, estate jewellery, mid-century interiors, and the exquisite tragedy of aging disgracefully while mourning being born too late to audition for Dynasty.

Welcome to My Empirical Life. Tired of the one-dimensional veneer filter placed on women, I write for both sirens and intellectuals, survivors and sensualists, those who are tender and wide awake, who like me want to walk through fire smelling of Tom Ford, Palo Santo and something real.