Exhibitions

There is something tenacious about the fragility with which Natalija Vujošević communicates her thoughts and emotions–insights and affects–in her referential installations. This determination is provoked by the hardly bearable mission she is conducting, and she conducts it on her own terms: the mission to contemplate banality. Instead of exposing, appropriating or laughing at banality she aims to actually and urgently contemplate it from a rather melancholic, yet critical, attitude. As Benjamin argued, it is in fact the state of ruin that materialistically exposes this remarkable conceptual combination of melancholia and critical vigour.

Benera and Estefan investigate conflict zones, past and present, and how they relate to territory, water, other natural resources, technological progress and, of course, the eternal common denominator: profit.

"I think that we are, that most Slovenians are very humble, um, that we're nice, that we know how to take care of the environment, most of us do." (Alina, 10 years old)Growing up is political; we are conditioned ideologically and affectively by the social communities that surround us. Referring to this, Dejan Kaludjerović’s art project Conversations: Hula-Hoops, Elastics, Marbles and Sand (2013–present) reminds us of the fact that childhood is not spared from political reality and political thought however much this period of life, often referred to as the age of innocence, may be devoid of social responsibility for the things that happen and will continue to happen in the future. 

In 1966, it took youth brigades, supported by the wider local community, lottery and the former construction giant Vegrad, less than fifty days to build 2000 square metres of exhibition spaces that were festively opened under the auspices of the United Nations. The twentieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the publication of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights inspired the title of the exhibition – Peace, Humanity and Friendship among Nations.

London-based Slovenian artist Jasmina Cibic is being presented to Ljubljana’s audience with a segment of a tripartite exhibition and film project entitled ‘Spielraum’ that draws on an essay by the Austrian writer, translator and satirist Karl Kraus.

In his artistic practice, Dante Buu (Rožaje, Montenegro) combines photography, text, video, embroidery and performance. His works are underscored by an incessant inquiry into the increasingly blurred boundaries between the private and the public as well as between the voyeuristic and the participatory. In addition, they scrutinise traditional gender roles and associated stereotypes as well as ever more fluid identities in the digital era.