We are pleased to announce that Nika Autor will represent Slovenia at the 57th Venice Biennale, the international art exhibition staged between May 13 and November 26, 2017. The Pavilion of the Republic of Slovenia continues to be located in the Arsenale, the central exhibition space of the Biennial.
Nika Autor sees her artistic practice as a reflection of social reality that helps to focus the gaze and sharpen the thought, empowering and giving voice and image to the inaudible and the invisible. The artist graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2008 with a degree in painting, and obtained her PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 2016. She is a co-founder and member of the Obzorniška fronta (Newsreel Front), a collective engaged in film, cultural and political theory, and art. Her works are included in the collections of Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, the International Center of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, the Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec, and the RIKO private art collection. For her work she has received the Jakopič Commendation, the Student Prešeren Award of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, and the France Brenk Commendation for accomplishments in the field of film culture.
Nika Autor’s major presentations in recent years include the exhibition Novice so naše! (The News is Ours!) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova in Ljubljana, Film d’actualites – l’actu est a nous at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, Between Worlds II at the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery in Zagreb, Shifts in Time: Performing the Chronic at the Mumok in Vienna, and participation in the 6th and 7th U3 Triennials of Contemporary Art in Slovenia.
The Slovene Minister of Culture Anton Peršak has appointed the Director of Moderna galerija Zdenka Badovinac the Commissioner of the Republic of Slovenia for the 57th Venice Biennale. Upon her suggestion, he has appointed Andreja Hribernik, the Director of the Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec, the curator of this year’s presentation.
The Foundation La Biennale di Venezia, which organizes international exhibitions of art and architecture in Venice, changed the organizational concept of events in 2015. As a result, the individual countries appoint for each exhibition a commissioner who must hold a managerial position in a national institution dedicated to the subject of the biennial. Thus the minister has appointed the Director of the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana the commissioner for the architecture biennale, and the Director of Modern galerija the commissioner for the art biennale. The commissioner is responsible for preparing, organizing and realizing the presentation of the Republic of Slovenia at the Venice Biennale 2017, and the curator for the content and the artistic expression of the presentation at the Biennale.
Andreja Hribernik, PhD, is the Director of the Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec. In 2006, she was awarded a work grant at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, where she went on to work as a curator after completing the grant program. She worked with digital archives and researched experimental forms of databases. From 2013 on she has focused on exploring the social role and potential of museums of contemporary art, and obtained her doctorate this year with the thesis Museum as a Space of Utopias.
Contact:
Andreja Bruss, public relations MG+MSUM
More information about the artist:
