New Era: PLATEAURESIDUE, Maja Smrekar, Robertina Šebjanič, Tanja Vujinović

The New Era exhibition showcases works of three artists and one artist group from Slovenia who, in their creative practices, consistently and continuously address the relationship between human and nature. The selected works provide a profound contemplation about anthropogenic interventions into natural environments and about current sociopolitical and economic structures of governance which are based on principles of infinite growth of production and consumption.

The exhibition at the Lapidarium attempts to establish a dialogue between conceptually diverse works of the PLATEAURESIDUE collective, Maja Smrekar, Robertina Šebjanič and Tanja Vujinović. By using different means of visual art making these artists are commonly dedicated to exploration of topical issues of modern age such as comprehension of natural environments, need for colonising nature and analysis of environmental policies that are nowadays still firmly based on the concepts of modernisation and development. In the history of modern and contemporary art, since the emergence of industrial revolutions, ideas and works of artists often touched upon phenomena of natural environment but only on the level of representation; however, in the past decades some artists took on more active role and started to relate their artistic practices with scientific and other interdisciplinary discourses. This particular orientation is summarised with this group exhibition showcasing highly analytical and engaged creative responses of artists to topical issues such as the world’s ecology, consequences of interventions in the environment, relationship between human and non-human, overcoming the culture-nature dualism, and the future of humankind.

Curator: Miha Colner

Photo: Jaka Babnik