Future-oriented Ljubljana. The list of several emerging artists from the Slovenian art scene.

Just like Slovenia itself, Ljubljana’s art scene is relatively small. The majority of artists know and support each other, whereas the institutional landscape of Ljubljana is quite rich. If you ever are in town, you should definitely visit the Cukrarna Gallery or the Institutional Center of Graphic Design, located on the hill in the Tivoli Park which hosts the biennales of graphics. Meanwhile, seminal local institutions, namely the Museum of Modern Art and Metelkova Museum of Contemporary Art, found themselves in a pinch after the dismissal of the director Zdenka Badovinac, which affected their programmes. Unfortunately, there are only a few commercial art galleries in town, which hinders the development of a local art market. Worth mentioning is certainly the Ravnikar Gallery which represents artists from Slovenia and abroad at various art fairs. Many artists also try to make a mark in the neighboring countries such as Croatia, Italy, and Austria.

The greatest advantage of the local art scene is small art centers developing programmes that are  encompassing discussions as well as exhibitions that probe into the relation of art and technology or new media. Examples include AKSIOMA, Skuć Gallery, and SCCA. Moreover, there are multiple art collectives, such as Šum journal consisting of a critical group of artists and theoreticians who not only publish a magazine but also organize conferences and performative events. A brand-new magazine titled ETC also launched its online and paper editions during the pandemic. Its creators organize exhibitions featuring up-and- coming artists from the Baltic all the way to the Balkan region. What is more, what distinguishes the city of Ljubljana is the fact that some of its extremely interesting local artists create digital and phygital art (the latter combines the physical and digital aspects), utilizing new technologies and offering a critical commentary on them. They are fascinated with the aesthetics of video games, science fiction, broadly understood post-internet and internetcore. They build speculative worlds deriving from futuristic reflections on technological advancement. Here is the list of several emerging artists from the Slovenian art scene:

Sara Bezovšek

Sara Bezovšek is a young visual artist focusing on new media, experimental film and graphic design. Her art practice is characterized by exploring, collecting, and archiving mainly the pop cultural visual references from various online platforms, films and TV series. She uses the copy-and-paste technique to turn digital materials  found on websites  into collages and video mash-ups, and post them to create narratives by way of appropriation. Her interests revolve around the things people are watching and sharing on social media, and how the visual material travels through the internet ecosystem, or how it changes and influences the users. With the use of digital images from the web, she intends to demonstrate how the online phenomena, cliches, and cult pop cultural references shape our perception of reality. The high density of short clips from well-known series and films, animated GIFs, internet memes, films and pictures from all sorts of platforms creates a multidimensional effect, resulting in the post-internet total art practice that would be best illustrated for instance by the expansive interactive projects, such as “SND. An interactive story game” – a collection of visual imaginings from popular culture on the subject of the apocalypse – or “Life of Its Own” dealing with the internet existence of famous films.

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Sanela Jahić

Sanela Jahić is an intermedia artist who graduated from the academies in Ljubljana as well as Bauhaus in Weimar (Germany). Her kinetic objects and installations use modern technology to comment on its influence on  society. The artist presents the  impact of ubiquitous algorithms on individuals in the context of a critique leveled at capitalist relations of production. In her artistic practice, Jahić collaborates with experts in mechanical engineering, automatics, programming and electronics. In  early 2023, her exhibition titled “Under the Calculation Gaze” opened in AKSIOMIA, the contemporary art institute that holds exhibitions as well as discursive events at the intersection of art and technology. The show was also accompanied by a book publication. The exhibition featured stock-like photos of smiling people of different identities, class backgrounds, and skin colors that were juxtaposed against the data related to the use of artificial intelligence by various countries and companies in order to categorize the citizens. The artist demonstrated how artificial intelligence can contribute to the rise of social injustice and authoritarian tendencies, as well as endorse right-wing postulates exacerbating social exclusion.

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Andrej Škufca

Andrej Škufca creates large-scale sculptures, installations and site-specific works. The most famous series of works by this artist is called Black Market – formally it alludes to oil pipelines, oceanic fiber-optic cables, marine eels, exoskeletons, and the earliest forms of multicellular microorganisms. The sculptures showcase a transformation of matter into living forms in endless combinations. In that sense, these works allude to the narratives known from science-fiction films and books and represent a speculative way of thinking about biomechanical forms of the future. These objects look like vibrant, dripping, constantly expanding bio machines, thus invoking the theories of posthumanism and reflection on the future relations between people and technology. Apart from his sculptural practice, Škufca also works as an editor of Šum journal.

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Agnes Momirski

Agnes Momirski is an interdisciplinary artist, visual director, writer, performer, musician and educator, operating mainly in Rotterdam and Ljubljana. Focused on the human condition amid technological shifts, her artistic research delves into digital culture, social media, and pop discourses. She creates a stage persona under moniker siXren, a vessel through which she analyzes the topic of augmenting the possibilities of the human body in the spirit of post-humanism. Her performances often use a variety of mediums, reflecting her interest in both image and sound. Her performance “siXren (verbum medicinae),” which combines a narrative on science and technology with the discourse about magic and rituals, was exhibited on twenty-two different occasions, including exhibitions in MGLC Svicarija Ljubljana and the latest in MOMUS Biennale in Thessaloniki.

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Dorijan Šiško

A multimedia artist and graphic designer focusing on games, VR, animation and installation art. His original style utilizes bright, expressive colors, layering, and remixing various elements. Dorijan Šiško is interested in building speculative worlds through which he explores the subjects related to post-truth, the dark side of the internet, neotribalism and science fiction. He collaborated with Sara Bezovšek on the game and installation „What’s Your Truth: Tipping Point” that was presented at the Osmo/za Gallery in Ljubljana. The space of a game was filled with memes and references to the current socio-political climate. It fuelled reflection on the information bubbles and ideology of spaces in which we operate. Šiško is also an active member of art collectives – Freštreš, a group organizing joint shows, and Nimaš Izbire, a music collective organizing parties.

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