Exhibition opening will take place on Thursday, June 9th at 19:00.

9. 6. – 24. 6. 2022

Participating artists:
Uroš Acman, Julija Cimafejeva, Peter Koštrun, Marko Lipuš, Karl Zens, Lena Trichtel.

What is a border? A simple definition says a border is a line that separates areas. Borders can can be physical, real, false, made up by people, they are abstract, they define social, status or gender definitions. The concept of “border” also leads us to other understandings of this word; we inevitably think of, for example, concepts such as freedom on the one hand or oppression on the other.

Because of the circumstances of the historical times in which we are living in, we are presented with various challenges; health, political, and unfortunately, more recently, also military-related. The vast restrictions put in place because of the pandemic, the complex issue of migration, and the actual war on the eastern borders of Europe, pose a great challenge to artists and exhibition designers alike. With this exhibition, we aim to focus our gaze towards a broader understanding of the concept of borders; one which subtly also includes the question of freedom with an emphasis on current events and developments. Exploring those concepts, we are not interested in reportage documents, but more in the metaphorical and conceptual approaches in contemporary photography.

In this sense, the six selected artists bring us some specific perspectives on the thematic range described above. In his series The Night, Uroš Acman attempts to capture the anxious feelings of those who cross unknown places at night, while Julija Cimafejeva’s project Sperrlinie (Obstacles) deals with how “an unspecified country has divided time into before and after”. In the case of Peter Koštrun, his indeterminate and misty landscapes evoke feelings of longing and vague expectations, while Marko Lipuš in his series Tactics, uses the popular Barbie and Ken dolls to portray just how meaningless the war games played by some world leaders are. Karl Zenz presents several works from the series Staatsgrenze oder die Grenze im Kopf, which are depicting the different peripheries of southern Austria, and Lena Trichtel’s project Das asexuelle Ageschlecht deals with the boundaries of understanding sexuality and privacy.

Exhibition Flyer
Photos from the exhibition in Graz
Photos from the exhibition in Ljubljana