Feminist Positions in Visual Art in and from Slovenia

ARTISTS: 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,  Tatiana Kocmur,  Andrea Knezović,   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.

The catalogue for the exhibition For Your Pleasure. Feminist Positions in Visual Art in and from Slovenia has been published. The exhibition, which took place last year at the Moderna galerija (MG+), was curated by Martina Vovk and assistant curator Kristjan Sedej. The exhibition brought together works by over 50 artists, focusing on artistic production that addresses gender and gender related discrimination. It also emphasised intersectionality— the interconnectedness of identities and personal circumstances such as class, race, and nationality. All works with a feminist position share the intention to create a lasting socio-political change through their exciting visual, material, spatial, performative, and process-based forms. Feminism and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible.

The exhibition catalogue includes seven in-depth contributions on the exhibition’s overarching themes and the exhibiting artists’ practices. In the introduction to the publication, written by Martina Vovk, we learn that the concept of the exhibition was, among other things, shaped by the time in which, as a result of major global and local movements and campaigns such as #MeToo, #jaztudi# (MeToo in Slovenia), and Samo ja pomeni ja (Only Yes Means Yes), and the simultaneous corrosion of already acquired women’s rights, “sensitivity to the discrimination of women has once again found its way to the forefront of broader societal attention.”

While Vovk discusses most of the factors and categories of intersectionality, Kristjan Sedej, in the following text, focuses particularly on the issue of identity declaration and discursiveness in the works of the younger generation of artists who participated in the exhibition. However, the generational focus is expanded in the final contribution to the catalog, co-authored by Sedej and Hana Samec Sekereš, which addresses the uncomfortable issue of the presence of women in visual arts in Slovenia in general.

This discomfort is also evident in Svetlana Slapšak‘s text, which, from a “non-artistic” perspective, humorously addresses the implications of the exhibition title and the significance of the works of the exhibiting artists. Her reflection introduces a fictional yet patriarchally vital problem — “the problem of women driving” — a “problem” that results in more deaths on the road. After a few twists, the readers find themselves in the text of writer and activist Suzana Tratnik, who leads us into the development of lesbian art in Slovenia. As the author writes, she did not encounter this art “in high school, in college, in the galleries of the time, or in available books, but on a hitchhike.”

Two important festivals are also featured in the catalog: Mesto žensk (City of Women), organised and produced by the eponymous association for the promotion of women in culture, and the international feminist and queer festival Rdeče zore (Red Dawn). The contribution to the first festival is authored by the founder of the City of Women association, Lilijana Stepančič, while Ana Grobler discusses the graphic design of the Red Dawn festival.