Ivona Pelajić (working under the name Ivona Schmidt Pelajic) is a Croatian multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Berlin, Germany. Her practice spans painting, installation, and participatory art, moving between the material and the ephemeral, the personal and the public. In her painting she engages with memory, perception, and imagination, drawing on symbols and geometries found in nature to explore correspondences between inner and outer worlds. Recurring motifs, such as underground root systems and plant auras, function as metaphors for unseen energies, emotional imprints, and the interconnectedness of systems. Across both painting and collaborative projects, she investigates how ephemeral experiences leave traces in the material world: as memory, symbol, spatial atmosphere, or invisible structures that shape perception and relation.

Schmidt Pelajic graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2010 (mag. art) and completed an MFA in Child Culture Design at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg (MFA 2020). Alongside her artistic work, she teaches and facilitates art workshops for children and adults, applying participatory and process-based approaches that position imagination and play as shared, transformative acts. Since 2021 she is a member of HDLU (Croatian Artists’ Association).