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

04 April 2025 > 30 April 2025 You are kindly invited to the exhibition "Remembering for Tomorrow" by Vesna Bukovec and Ana Čigon on Friday, 4 April: guided tour at 6 p.m. and opening 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 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Accompanying programme:
Friday, 8.4., at 6 p.m.: guided tour of the exhibition with the artists and the curatorial team;
Wednesday, 16.4. at 5 p.m.: discussion with the artists and the curatorial team;
Thursday, 17.4. at 6 p.m.: guided tour of the exhibition with the artists.

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 curator 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 is here the process of returning attention to the past to uncover and connect overlooked stories and their actors, is an important tool in the search for alternatives to the neoliberal paradigm. In the course of the project's development, two documentary videos were also produced.The first video is Precariat of the World ... (2022), in which the trade unionist Tea Jarc, the classical philologist, anthropologist and writer Dr. Svetlana Slapšak, and Jadranka Vesel from the Rise Research Institute for Social Economy, reflect on the situation of contemporary workers, communities and the future. The second video is Deceptive Working Time (2024), which will be presented at Alkatraz Gallery. In it, Ajda Pistotnik, MA, from Policy Lab presents the views on organising work and society proposed by the concept of Degrowth, which reminds us that endless (economic) growth is not ecologically sustainable in the quest for greater social and environmental justice. Prof. Dr. Lilijana Burcar accordingly addresses the historical differences in working conditions for women under socialism and capitalism and presents the importance of women's systemic emancipation. Their explanations are accompanied by playful, sometimes animated, line illustrations by both artists. The latter not only add dynamics to the static frame of the spoken word but also highlight the key points of what is being said in an agreeably humorous way that brings the content even closer to the viewer and imprints it in their memory.



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

Vesna Bukovec and Ana Čigon are (have been) involved in various ways and with diverse roles both in the International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns and The Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women, 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. The overview of the works in the exhibition, however, is only the tip of the iceberg, as their production is truly extensive. This will be particularly evident in the compilation of shorter videos by both artists, which include artist videos, animations and performance documentation. Serious but also humorous, the videos reveal how feminist engagement can also be a catalyst for social change through connecting, sharing reflections, dreams and flirtatious smiles. The importance of laughter is also reflected in their work in the burlesque-cabaret collective Fem TV, for which Vesna Bukovec, in addition to editing the videos, has created a distinctive visual image, while Ana Čigon also impresses with her singing performances.

Works that touch on the monumentality of memory include Ana Čigon's documentary Remembering the Others (2015), which explores the meaning and power of public monuments, and Vesna Bukovec's series of illustrations of protests And yet I do bother (2019), depicting women who, in her own words, have used their own bodies to expose themselves in the struggle for social change. In Ana Čigon's film, theorists, activists, students, and artists from Pristina, Kosovo, reflect on public monuments and wonder why monuments dedicated to female figures do not exist. Although they note that if the stories of marginalised groups are silenced and the canonised stories of history are not reflected on, the result will always be only one derivation of the truth, in the film's epilogue they also offer suggestions for the monuments they would like to see in the future. Vesna Bukovec's series of illustrations is also part of the answer to the question of how to record history more justly, as it highlights, in its distinctively clear and refined manner, the engagement of globally known, lesser-known and unknown women who have changed the world through their courageous acts of resistance. Both works are about hope, about a better world with a common denominator: feminism.

This is where the interactive work Why Am I a Feminist? comes in, which envisages the involvement of the visitors of the exhibition and is an indirect continuation of the project by Vesna Bukovec, which she contributed to the special issue of the ČKZ Journal for the Critique of Science entitled Feminism, art, literature through the perspectives of the past, present and future: Where to go from discomfort? (drawings 2023, publication edition 2024), in which she made portraits of the authors of the texts together with their answers to the question of why they are feminists. As part of the exhibition, visitors will also be invited to record their reflections on this topic. This model of involving visitors in the artwork is a principle that Vesna Bukovec has often used in the KOLEKTIVA group (with Lada Cerar and Metka Zupanič). It also reminds us of the collection of names of female videographers in the exhibition Cheers to Women! 25 Years of Film and Video (2019), she curated with Ana Čigon. At the first screening of and in Remembering the Others, Ana Čigon also included post-it notes on which participants wrote down the names of women they thought should be remembered.

In addition to presenting their feminist contribution to contemporary art, the exhibition of Vesna Bukovec and Ana Čigon is also a celebration of the work of the Red Dawns and City of Women festivals and the links between them, to which the artists themselves have undoubtedly contributed greatly. In the spirit of the recently passed 25th anniversary of Red Dawns and the current 30th anniversary of the City of Women Association, 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.

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 in interface cultures (University of Arts Linz, Austria). Her projects deal with social and feminist themes, such as the underrepresentation of women artists in art history, LGBTQI+ 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 media 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, in the Fem TV collective, among others. She has had solo exhibitions at the Alkatraz Gallery, Kapelica Gallery and Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana; Kibela and GT 22 Maribor, Celje Art Salon, Simulaker Novo Mesto, Stacion – Center 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, MSMU – Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, and MG – Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, etc. She is the winner of the OHO Award (2009), a finalist of the Henkel Slovenia Prize (2010) and a finalist of the Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation Prize (2010). In the field of film, she has received five awards. 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 focus being drawing, in addition to video. She has presented her work in a number of solo exhibitions (Centre and P74 Gallery, 2003 and 2005; Miklova hiša Gallery, 2009; KAPSULA, 2010; Cankarjev dom (Art Critiques' Choice) 2011; Alkatraz Gallery, 2012, 2016; Domžale Gallery, 2013, 2023; House of Culture in Pivka, 2015, 2019; Simulaker Gallery, 2006, 2018, ArtKit Gallery, Ravne Gallery, 2019; GONG Gallery, 2020, Savin's Art Salon, 2021; Škuc Gallery 2007, 2022; raum AU, 2023, Ivan Grohar Gallery, 2024) and group exhibitions at home and abroad. Since 2015, she has been associate of DIVA Station at SCCA-Ljubljana, curating exhibitions, video programmes and is member 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 designed Reflections publications. 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: Aneta Hradilová.

Thanks to: Center for Contemporary Arts SCCA-Ljubljana, ŠKUC Association

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