26th Red Dawns | Vesna Bukovec and Ana Čigon: “Remembering for Tomorrow”

04 April 2025 > 30 April 2025 You are kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition "Remembering for Tomorrow" by Vesna Bukovec and Ana Čigon on Friday, 4 April at 7 p.m. at the Alkatraz Gallery. The exhibition is coproduced by the Association for the Promotion of Women in Culture – City of Women and is a part of 26. International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns.

Kindly invited to events of the 26th International Feminist and Queer festival Red Dawns   and to events of the City of Women festival as well!





 

Vesna Bukovec and Ana Čigon: Remembering for Tomorrow
Friday, 4 April 2025, at 7 pm
Alkatraz Gallery, Masarykova 24, 1000 Ljubljana
Free entrance – Mondays until Fridays between noon and 6 pm

The second exhibition of the International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns, taking place in April and organised in collaboration with the Association for the Promotion of Women in Culture – City of Women, features two of the key artists who have been working independently and together in many fields of art in Slovenia for more than two decades. Social criticism, more specifically, feminist art, is an important foundation of Vesna Bukovec's and Ana Čigon's artistic practice.

Since 2021, the artists have been developing the Work in Progress project, together with Tia Čiček. Within it, the role of remembering is to bring ways of better understanding one's own relationship to work and community. For the artists, remembering, which is meant in the broadest sense and alludes to the process of returning attention to the past in order to uncover and connect overlooked stories and their actors, is an important tool in the search for alternatives to the neoliberal paradigm.

Both have been involved in various ways and with diverse roles both in the Red Dawns festival and City of Women festival, two renowned non-governmental actors with a long history in the field of feminism in culture and art. The exhibition entitled Remembering for Tomorrow – besides highlighting the relevant contribution of both artists to the recognition of the importance of feminist themes in society and foregrounding their input to the development of the field – is also a dedication to their activist work.

Moreover, the exhibition of Vesna Bukovec and Ana Čigon is a celebration of the work of the two festivals and the links between them, to which the artists themselves have undoubtedly made a significant contribution. In the spirit of the recently passed 25th anniversary of Red Dawns and the current 30th anniversary of City of Women, the exhibition is a contribution to the historicization of a certain period and the mapping of collaborations in the context of feminist art in the local space; it is an act of remembering those events, concepts, struggles and persons that give us the strength and knowledge to build feminist future.



Photo:Left: Vesna Bukovec, from the series of digital drawings Why I'm a feminist?, 2023. Right: Ana Čigon, performance Cheers to Women! A Performative Appetizer to Video Art, 2019, photo: Nada Žgank / City of Women

Ana Čigon (1982) is an artist working in the fields of video, film, and performance. She holds an MA in Video (The Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana) and an MA in Interface Cultures (University of Arts Linz, Linz, Austria). Her projects deal with social and feminist themes such as the underrepresentation of women in history LGBTI+ issues, critique of European refugee policy and neoliberalism, etc. She often incorporates elements of humour and irony in her works and does not limit herself to a single medium in her production process. In recent years, she has also been working in film and has participated in collective performance projects with her co-authors, among them with Fem TV collective. Among others, she has had solo exhibitions at the Alkatraz Gallery, Kapelica and Škuc in Ljubljana; Kibela and GT 22 Maribor, Likovni Salon Gallery, Simulaker Novo Mesto, Stacion – Centre for Contemporary Art Priština, etc. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program) in New York, USA, Istanbul Modern in Turkey, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana and Modern Gallery Ljubljana, etc. She is the winner of the OHO Group Prize (2009), a finalist of the Henkel Slovenia Prize (2010) and a finalist of the Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation Prize (2010). She has received five awards in the field of film. www.anacigon.si

Vesna Bukovec (1977) received her BA and MA in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana. She is a socially critical artist who expresses herself in various media, with her main focus being drawing, in addition to video. She has presented her work in a number of solo exhibitions (P74 Centre and Gallery, 2003 and 2005; Mikl House Gallery, 2009; KAPSULA, 2010; Cankarjev dom (Art Critics’ Choice) 2011; Alkatraz Gallery, 2012, 2016; Domžale Gallery, 2013, 2023; Pivka House of Culture, 2015, 2019; Simulaker Gallery, 2006, 2018, ArtKit Gallery, Ravne Gallery, 2019; GONG Gallery, 2020, Savinov Likovni salon, 2021; Škuc Gallery 2007, 2022; raum AU, 2023, Ivan Grohar Gallery, 2024) and group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad. Since 2015, she has been a professional collaborator of DIVA Station at SCCA-Ljubljana, curating exhibitions, video programmes and is part of the programme team of the festival of experimental audiovisual practices V-F-X Ljubljana. Between 2016 and 2022, she designed the visual identity of the City of Women festival and the Reflections publication. For a short time, she was part of the FEM TV collective and documented the Red Dawns festival. She is self-employed in culture and active also in the field of web and graphic design for cultural NGOs. www.vesna-bukovec.net

 

Info

Organization: 26th International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns (KUD Mreža)
Production: KUD Mreža/ Red Dawns, Association for the Promotion of Women in Culture – City of Women

Curatorial team: Ana Grobler, Sebastian Krawczyk, Iva Kovač, Urška Kleindienst 
Visual identity (Red Dawns): Lenča Malec
Visual identity (City of Women): Urška Alič
Contacts for the media: Saša Nemec, rdece.zore@gmail.com
Translation to English: Ana Makuc
Proof-reading in Slovene: Sonja Benčina
Photo:Left: Vesna Bukovec, from the series of digital drawings Why I'm a feminist?, 2023. Right: Ana Čigon, performance Cheers to Women! A Performative Appetizer to Video Art, 2019, photo: Nada Žgank / City of Women
Photos of the exhibition: Nada Žgank

Financial support: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City Council Ljubljana