What if comfort wasn’t the enemy of growth, but its most radical form? In a world that glorifies hustle and discomfort as signs of progress, the idea of a comfort zone is often dismissed as a trap. But what if seeking comfort – emotional, physical, communal – wasn’t about playing it safe, but about reclaiming space, safety, and care? These are the provocations driving this year’s Ljubljana Art Weekend, which returns with a timely and resonant theme: Comfort Zone.
From site-specific interventions to audio-led walks, the city becomes a canvas for connection, vulnerability, and care. In its fourth edition, Ljubljana Art Weekend continues to be a key moment in the Slovenian contemporary art calendar – an invitation for local and international audiences to explore the city through exhibitions, talks, performances, and site-specific interventions. The event brings together artists, curators, and institutions, creating space for both emerging and established voices to reflect on urgent issues shaping contemporary life. While past editions have explored themes such as locality, surrealism, and labour conditions, this year’s program turns inward – to care, safety, kinship, and the politics of belonging.
The 2025 edition adopts a dynamic and participatory structure, placing special emphasis on interaction and accessibility. Audiences will be guided through the city on curated walks and audio-led experiences that blur the boundaries between public and private space. From immersive artwalks and experimental installations to intimate storytelling and collaborative workshops, Ljubljana Art Weekend challenges the conventional white-cube format, asking what it means to feel safe, seen, and included in artistic spaces today.
At its core, the event is an experiment in building community – through art, through conversation, and through a shared desire to find comfort not as escapism, but as a place of connection and resilience. Whether you’re an art world regular or a curious newcomer, Ljubljana Art Weekend invites you to step into spaces where vulnerability is welcome and comfort is reimagined as a collective act. And for the second year in a row, the team behind ETC. Magazine will take over the artistic direction of the event. On this occasion, we talk to the ETC. team – Hana Čeferin, Ajda Ana Kocutar, and Lara Mejač – about this year’s edition, plans for the future, and the notion of comfort and discomfort.
Patrycja Poznańska: Ljubljana Art Weekend continues to grow each year as a key event on the city’s cultural calendar. What can visitors expect from this year’s edition, and what were your main goals when shaping the 2025 programme?
ETC.: As it is our second year of taking over artistic direction of Ljubljana Art Weekend, we were thinking about how to build on last year’s edition, deepening the connections with the local art community, as well as expanding our international reach. We prepared a curated programme of networking events, screenings, guided tours for different audiences, as well as a diverse discursive programme featuring Cem A., Klara Debeljak and ŠUM Journal to broaden the discussion on the topic of Comfort Zone we are unpacking in this edition.
This year, we also included initiatives and individuals from other fields with the aim of expanding our audiences beyond the contemporary visual art scene, and added new programmes which highlight often overlooked spaces or areas in Ljubljana. For instance, we’ve reimagined one Artwalk into a new format called OFF THE MAP, which explores lesser-known areas of the city. This year, we’re spotlighting the Šiška neighbourhood through a guided walk that highlights local artistic initiatives and organisations, providing an inside look into this urban community, which, because of its location, might otherwise go unnoticed.
Just like last year, we will explore the topic through our main group exhibition connected to the fourth issue of our magazine. The main location of the exhibition will be in Mala galerija BS, which will also serve as the info point of Ljubljana Art Weekend. The exhibition will expand into the public space in the form of a performative audio tour exploring the elusive concept of the comfort zone. Visitors will be led into the city with the help of an audio-narrated guide, in which artists will tell stories, anecdotes, or impressions about what comfort is to each of us – both in terms of our body and the spaces it occupies.
P.P.: And this year’s theme, Comfort Zone, examines comfort in both intimate and socio-political terms. What sparked your interest in this topic?
ETC.: This year’s topic, Comfort Zone, is connected to the fourth issue of ETC. magazine. When choosing the annual theme for the magazine and, consequently, for Ljubljana Art Weekend, we always take into account our personal positions as well as the reflections and issues we’ve been noticing in contemporary visual art at the moment. After dealing with the local environment and the ways it connects to the global in the first issue, our fever dream-like reality in the second and working conditions in the third, we wanted to turn towards the notions of family, love, friendship, and community and highlight how important comfort, safety, and care are in the unpredictable and hostile times that we live in. Truthfully, it felt as important to focus on that aspect for us personally as it did from the perspective of contemporary art.
“As it is our second year of taking over artistic direction of Ljubljana Art Weekend, we were thinking about how to build on last year’s edition, deepening the connections with the local art community, as well as expanding our international reach.”
P.P.: What do you think artists today are most uncomfortable addressing – and did any of that surface in the submitted or selected works? What kinds of artistic media felt especially resonant or urgent for exploring the topic of Comfort Zone? Did any particular medium surprise you in how it handled the theme?
ETC.: In this issue of the magazine, the artistic positions are quite vulnerable, intimate, and personal, which can sometimes be uncomfortable for artists and writers to explore and exhibit so publicly. Yet, this wasn’t really something we’ve noticed throughout the process. Perhaps there’s a part of the audience that might feel uncomfortable, as several presented artists are dealing with sexual freedom, different forms of families, and gender expressions, but our focus was on the comfort of the people struggling to find or establish their own safe space rather than on the discomfort of those who shouldn’t feel negatively affected by others’ happiness.
We’ve tried to include projects that approach these ideas from a space of openness and contemplation, to see how concepts of comfort can connect to different expressions of self. We always choose works based on the theme, so the medium doesn’t play too much of a role in this aspect. This was something we’ve agreed on since the very beginning of ETC. – that we would consider the theme first, the medium second, even if it’s sometimes a challenge to present some works in the format of a magazine.
P.P.: Speaking of challenges. In a world where comfort is both marketed and politicised, how did you approach curating projects that challenge these dominant narratives?
ETC.: The idea of a “comfort zone” is often perceived as a lack of action and at odds with the ideas of constant progress and personal growth that follow capitalist logic, but we have tried to subvert these preconceptions and show that seeking or creating comfort is not a given, and can be seen as an act of resistance, as brave and challenging as jumping into the unknown. In our curatorial research, we were focusing on projects that see comfort as an alternative to a world that often feels isolating, exploring the relations to one’s body, personal relationships, family histories, and identities and highlighting the importance of kinship, belonging, and community. These are the topics that we are also introducing in this year’s Ljubljana Art Weekend programme, which will involve many local initiatives and organisations, emphasising the urgency of working together and community building.
P.P.: The Art Weekend’s main group exhibition includes interventions in public and semi-public spaces. How do you approach site-specificity in your curatorial practice? What does “space” mean for you when curating a show about comfort?
ETC.: Last year, we presented all 20 projects included in the magazine in a major group exhibition in an abandoned department store as part of Ljubljana Art Weekend. This year, we decided to go for a more experimental format, which can be seen as an extension of a smaller exhibition we are putting together in the Mala galerija BS in the centre of the city. In the form of an audio guide, we’ll lead visitors out of the gallery on various guided walks around the city, while the artists will vocally share their perspectives on comfort as they understand it in terms of public and private spaces.
The idea is that we would create a small physical exhibition, a little bubble of comfort in the centre of Ljubljana, but then open up the conversation about the public spaces we feel welcome and accepted in. It will be interesting also to see the reaction of the audience, who are often struggling to feel comfortable in white-cube gallery spaces, and even more so with actively engaging with an exhibition, which we’re now inviting them to do. It’ll be an interesting experiment for all of us!
“In our curatorial research, we were focusing on projects that see comfort as an alternative to a world that often feels isolating, exploring the relations to one’s body, personal relationships, family histories, and identities and highlighting the importance of kinship, belonging, and community.”
P.P.: How do you balance showcasing emerging artists alongside more established voices? Is there a different kind of curatorial responsibility that comes with featuring younger or less visible practitioners?
ETC.: Since we started the magazine, we’ve agreed that we wouldn’t make a difference between more established and more emerging artistic positions in our portfolio section. If the project fits the topic, we try to include it and present each one equally. If an artist we’re interested in has a well-developed practice and a lot of experience in the subject, we prefer to include them in the format of an interview or a studio visit, which are also segments of the magazine. Recently, we’ve included different positions, also as a crossword puzzle or a horoscope, where we incorporate positions we’re interested in by experimenting with the magazine format. But we remain flexible and are trying to adapt to the people we’re working with on each issue. It’s never quite the same. Even for Ljubljana Art Weekend, we try to invite a mix of emerging and established artists and curators, while of course remaining true to our goal, which is connecting international and local audiences.
P.P.: Artwalks, Meet Cute, and Off the Map offer immersive, site-specific formats. What is the curatorial strategy behind designing experiences rather than just traditional exhibitions?
ETC.: As Ljubljana Art Weekend is both an international as well as a local platform seeking to connect different audiences, we find that these formats, which encourage encounters and participation, work best. An important part of the programme in this context is the Meet Cute, a networking event connecting artists & curators. This kind of format creates new connections between the local art scene and the international professional community, as well as potential new opportunities for emerging young artists. Another important part is guided curated Artwalks conceptualised by different established curators and artists, which give the audience completely new insights into the artistic production in Ljubljana through the eyes of different art professionals.
Besides the curated programme, the key component of Ljubljana Art Weekend is, as ever, our close collaboration with art institutions, galleries and project spaces, which will provide diverse exhibitions, guided tours, workshops and other events. We believe this year’s programme will open up new perspectives on our local artistic environment to guests from abroad, while also offering exciting events for local audiences.
P.P.: What role do you think discomfort plays in curating and experiencing contemporary art? How do you approach it when thinking about audience engagement and interpretation?
ETC.: We think that discomfort plays a very big role in contemporary art, both for the authors of exhibitions and the audience. On the one hand, contemporary art is, in many ways, built on the idea of prestige and cultural capital, which often doesn’t translate into fair working conditions for the people who produce and curate art exhibitions. We’ve explored precarious working conditions in our previous issue, and we don’t think this type of existential discomfort should be tolerated. On the other hand, we often talk to people who might feel uncomfortable in contemporary art exhibitions, feeling like they’re not educated enough to understand the art or are not welcome to express their opinions.
In a way, we’re both suffering from the same notion that art is something to quietly revere, and art institutions serve a higher purpose that somehow excuses them from appropriately communicating with their audiences and underpaying their workers. Conversely, we see an opportunity to open up discussions, connect people who might never meet otherwise, and try to make people feel welcome in the space, but most importantly, in the topic itself. If it wasn’t clear from this interview already, we prefer comfort and care in our work environments to discomfort and exhaustion.
Ljubljana Art Weekend
May 23-25, 2025
