For Your Pleasure
Feminist Positions in Visual Art in and from Slovenia

Museum of Modern Art, MG+

Exhibition opening: Friday, 27 October 2023 at 8 p.m.

Lina Akif   Zemira Alajbegović   Milijana Babić   Mirjana Batinić   Urban Belina   Saša Bezjak   Vanja Bućan   Vesna Bukovec   Jasmina Cibic   Lea Culetto   Ana Čigon  Eclipse   Elena Fajt   Andreja Gomišček   Olja Grubić   Marina Gržinić   Dejan Habicht   Đejmi Hadrović   Ida Hiršenfelder   Maja Hodošček   House on the Hill   Tjaša Kancler   Jasna Klančišar   Andrea Knezović   Tatiana Kocmur   Neven Korda   Mankica Kranjec   Anka Krašna   Rok Kravanja   Meta Krese   Tanja Lažetić   Agate Lielpētere   Aprilija Lužar   Dušan Mandič   Lela B. Njatin   Daniel Petković   Jovita Pristovšek   Tadej Pogačar & P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art   Urška Preis   Marija Mojca Pungerčar   Maruša Sagadin   Duba Sambolec   Simona Semenič   Mojca Senegačnik   Zvonka T Simčič   Nataša Skušek   Maja Smrekar   Alenka Spacal   Saša Spačal   Zora Stančič   Aina Šmid   Ajda Tomazin   Jasmina Založnik   Lana Zdravković (KITCH)   Nada Žgank

Curator: Martina Vovk

Assistant Curator: Kristjan Sedej

Our thanks for their advice in selecting the works and artists for the exhibition to: Ana Grobler, Tea Hvala, Lilijana Stepančič, Suzana Tratnik, Tanja Rener, Saša Bezjak, Bojana Piškur and Ana Čigon.

The exhibition presents artistic production focusing on gender and gender-related discrimination, on sexism and the inequality of women (and all who identify as women), with discrimination manifesting at the intersections of gender and other categories and circumstances, such as class, labor, race, nationality, sexual identity, and age.

Feminist positions in visual art in and from Slovenia can be understood as those positions that address issues of gender in the theme of the artwork; that use styles, techniques, and media in critical, ironic or subversive ways; or that conceive or practice methods of artistic creation and action in ways that depart from the conventional notion of an autonomous work of art or authorship and its predictable result of reproducing the patriarchal-capitalist order. All artworks based on feminist positions share the aim of bringing about – through their imaginative and affective potential of articulating ideas and concepts in compelling visual, material, spatial, performative, and processual forms – a transformative effect capable of producing permanent sociopolitical change.

There are thus several instances of early feminist art in Slovenia, all of them equally valid and sharing a determining trait – the realization of articulating gender-based social discrimination as the main theme of the artistic statement or method of artistic work. Like elsewhere in the world, feminist themes in artistic production in Slovenia generally came to the fore only once the demand for the equality of the sexes had been clearly articulated in the broader social sphere. In the Yugoslav context, this happened with the new feminism of the late 1970s (marked by the Comrade Woman conference in Belgrade in 1978), while in Slovenia the new feminist movement formulated the issue of the equality of women and sexual minorities as a political issue during the time of the civil society movements in the 1980s. Ever since, from the time of late socialism through the transition to present-day capitalism, artists in Slovenia (predominantly female) have been creating art testifying to the fact that the feminist awareness of gender inequality is increasingly productive, with themes that encompass more and more aspects of the social and the personal.

The areas and topics of interest of the artists presented at the exhibition coincide with those of feminist theory, social movements, and political action. They emerge as universal feminist themes outlining numerous specific positions, personal iconographies, figurations, memories, investigations, performative actions, and individual artistic statements in the perspective of gender-based discrimination and through the prism of the intersection with other areas of discrimination, above all labor, class, race, nationality, and LGBTIQ+ identities.

Opening Program, 27 October 2023

2:30 – 4 p.m. – workshop for adolescents with the artist Mirjana Batinić

6 p.m. – talk with the artists Andrea Knezović and Mirjana Batinić, moderator Kristjan Sedej

8 p.m. – formal opening: the exhibition will be opened by Dr. Asta Vrečko, the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia

                 recital by the Women’s Choir Kombinat

9 p.m. – performance The Following Body by Tatiana Kocmur