Slovenian pavilion attracts much attention at Venice Biennial
Ljubljana, 5 December - Slovenia drew a lot of attention at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice with its pavilion and an independent pavilion featuring an NSK State-in-Time project.
Venice, Italy
The Slovenian pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice.
Photo: Tamino Petelinšek/STA
Slovenia's official pavilion at the Biennial was labelled a must-see by several prominent media, including The Guardian, whose Laura Cumming placed it among the top five pavilions in Venice. Cumming was impressed by the project curated by Andreja Hribernik and entitled Novicam se ne odpovemo! (News Belongs to Us!). It featured film activist Nika Autor's 30-minute hybrid of a newsreel and experimental documentary inspired by the refugee crisis and a monograph dedicated to current newsreel practices.
The NSK pavilion also drew inspiration from the refugee crisis. The show, commissioned by visual arts collective Irwin, featured a temporary NSK passport office run by asylum seekers stationed in Venice at the time. Three Slovenian artists, the avant-garde group OHO, the group's driving force - sculptor Marko Pogačnik, and Vadim Fiškin, a Russian-born artist who has worked in Slovenia since 1996, were also presented at the main exhibition of the Biennial, which ran between 13 May to 26 November.