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