[33. obletnica AKC Metelkova mesto] Anka Kočevar: “Piece of Imagination”

04 September 2026 > 02 October 2026 Join uf for the opening of Anka Kočevar's retrospective exhibition "Piece of Imagination" (Kos domišljije) on Friday, September 4th, at 8:00 PM at Alkatraz Gallery, AKC Metelkova mesto. Before that, at 7:00 PM, the artist's exhibition "Between Beauty and Sadness" (Med lepoto in žalostjo) will open at the smallest galleries, Channel Zero. The exhibition is part of the celebration for the 33rd anniversary of AKC Metelkova mesto. You are also welcome to attend the other events of the 33rd anniversary!

The exhibtion is a part of events of the 33th Anniversary of ACC Metelkova mesto

The poster for the anniversary: Mojca Pavlič

 

Anka Kočevar: Piece of Imagination
retrospective exhibition

Anka Kočevar’s retrospective exhibition at the Alkatraz Gallery clearly illustrates how her rich artistic oeuvre defies simple categorisation into a single fine art discipline. Although she is primarily known to the public as an illustrator of children’s books and magazines, such as Ciciban, Cicido and Galeb, her creative work has long transcended the boundaries of book illustration. Her artistic universe is comprised of painting, animated film, comics, murals and teaching, in which the media she employs enable the development of critical reflection. Regardless of the medium of creative expression, the image and its ability to create independent visual worlds remain at the centre of her interest. Her skilful and diverse works of art are not defined merely by the fact that she employs various media and approaches, but above all by her consistent exploration of narrative as an integral part of the visual space. She is primarily interested in the question of how an image tells a story – and how it can invite the viewer into a world that cannot be conveyed by a single interpretation. Even when working in the fields of illustration or animation, her images are not solely accompaniments to a text or a script, but rather independent visual wholes. In them, we can discern a distinctive approach to composition, light, rhythm and materiality that transcends the role of illustration.

The common denominator of her oeuvre is not the technical performance or personal style, but rather her incessant exploration of the  approaches and possibilities offered by drawing and painting. For the artist, these are not merely a preparation for the final work, but an equal and autonomous space for experimentation, where precise observation, deliberate brushwork and a keen sense of atmosphere-building converge. All this connects her diverse and varied creative approaches that traverse between the naturalistic and the two-dimensional – into an integrated whole, characterised by stylistic flexibility, based on the rhythm of forms and colours, and focused on the character of the portrayed topic. This versatility of styles allows the artist to build emotionally striking dramatic and fantastical atmospheres by employing various visual languages, through which she repeatedly draws closer to the essence of the story or content she is depicting.

She perceives literary sources as open fields of possibility, where the visual narrative does not explain the story, but rather complements
it, expands upon it, or moves it to a different emotional position. The relationship between humans and nature occupies an important place
in her work. The animals in her work are not only endearing literary characters, but also bearers of traits, emotions and often ethical questions as well. This sensitivity is even more evident in her original animated film in progress entitled The Dung Beetle, in which the story about a boy who turns into a beetle becomes a tale of empathy and responsibility toward other living beings. The film’s script reveals that the author is interested in themes that transcend the scope of children’s literature and touch upon broader issues of society, ecology and interpersonal relationships. This is also the reason why the exhibition features an illustration from the picture book The Mouse and the Blackbird. In Boots, You’re not Barefoot (Marko Kravos, Mladinska knjiga, 2025) with a different frame than the others, displayed
on its own wall. In a beautiful black-and-white rendering, through a non-normative (romantic) interspecies partnership, in a multi-layered way, with queer undertones, it conveys a message of solidarity and advocates for a shared struggle against militarisation.

The scene of the mouse and the blackbird, depicted in various shades of grey that, nonetheless, allow for variations in interpretation
regarding the theme and their active – or activist – shredding the military boot, inevitably brings to mind evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis’s theory of endosymbiosis. Margulis identified cooperation and symbiosis as key driving forces of evolution, although her theory initially faced strong resistance and ridicule from the scientific community in the 1970s.

Yet, depicting cooperation is not the only area that interests the artist. Collaboration plays an important role in her animation projects as well. Animated film, in general, holds a special place in her oeuvre. She has collaborated on a number of internationally acclaimed projects, including the multi-award-winning film Steakhouse (2021) directed by Špela Čadež, as well as the animated documentary A Thousand Hours of Bitterness for One Hour of Joy (2018) and the series Prince Ki Ki-Do (2013–2017). In animation, she is primarily interested in the question of how to preserve the expressiveness of hand-drawn images in time and motion. Animation is thus not a separate field of her artistic work, but rather an organic continuation of drawing, which for the author is not entirely static to begin with; even on paper, we can sense movement, change and the breathing of space and rhythm.

In recent years, she has expanded her exploration to the field of comics. Her début comic book titled Sleepy Ánzili, based on a Resian folk tale, demonstrates her interest in the interweaving of contemporary visual language and folk tradition. Comics are not merely illustrated stories, but rather an exploration of the rhythm of storytelling, the relationship between sequential images and the economy of visual expression – akin to the principle of animation.

Even though the media in which the artist creates and the approaches she employs are incessantly changing, there are several constants in her artworks. These include the distinct narrativity of the image, a subtle sense of atmosphere and an exceptional ability for observation. Furthermore, her images are not over-saturated with data; rather, they hover at that critical point where they still allow for imagination, the weighing of one’s own emotional responses and reflection. Since they eschew the employment of spectacle for its own sake, they appear reserved at first glance; yet, it is precisely within this visual silence that they reveal a wealth of emotional and psychological nuances. The artist demonstrates that she can address the viewer through subtlety, perhaps even more effectively than through flashiness. This almost meditative stance, which is especially valuable in an age of visual saturation, is far from being empty. Behind it lie strong professional
proficiency, versatile skill and a broad capacity for realisation. In her work, one can recognise, influences from the tradition of painting,
contemporary illustration, animation and even cinematic framing. However, no single influence dominates the others; rather, they interact almost symbiotically as a whole, synthesising these diverse forms of expression, which are all part of the same creative logic.

It is therefore no coincidence that Anka Kočevar has also found her place within the diverse, changeable and challenging community of
Autonomous cultural centre Metelkova mesto. This space, based on collaboration, coexistence and creative exchange, resonates with her
understanding of art as an open process of connection. Yet, the influence is not one-sided. Just as she actively co-creates the community,
the community also enters her illustrations. Her illustrations often feature the faces of people she regularly encounters in the courtyards of
Metelkova, people with whom she collaborates or whom she simply observes closely. The real world thus flows into the drawing, and
the drawing flows back into life, blurring the boundaries between documentary observation and imaginative storytelling.

Anka Kočevar’s entire artistic oeuvre reveals an artist who perceives fine art as an open space for dialogue between the image, the word and the viewer. Her illustrations, animations, comics and paintings are not separate chapters, but rather different expressions of the same creative purpose; that is, the exploration of images as vehicles for stories, emotions and ethical questions. With regards to this, the distinction
between ‘high’ and applied art is irrelevant, as her illustrations are not just accompaniments to literary texts, but autonomous works of art that function as complete visual wholes even outside the context of a book. Likewise, animation is not merely a film technique, nor is painting solely a gallery discipline. In her creative practice, all media converge in a shared endeavour: to create an image that not only tells a story, but also opens up space for the viewer’s own experience, imagination and interpretation.

Her illustrations are characterised by humour, gentle irony, empathy for animals and nature and a keen sense for the small, everyday situations in which complex relationships and important contemporary issues are gradually revealed. They have a calm, almost meditative quality and invite the viewer to observe them at a leisurely pace. At a time when we are surrounded by a constant stream of images and ever-faster visual communication, Anka Kočevar’s work consciously offers a different creative response. Her images do not compete for attention with the spectacle of visual over-saturation and the noisy outside world, but rather draw their power from silence, patience and the slow unveiling of meanings, in which more complex relationships between space, light, time and society begin to emerge subtly from minute details. Her oeuvre is therefore exceptionally relevant, as it reminds us that an image is not merely information, but a space of encounter in which diversity and otherness are inherently positive assets and where – precisely because of them – imagination and empathy can develop freely.

 

 

Ana Grobler, Sebastian Krawczyk

Anka Kočevar (1982) graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, in 2009. Her creative practice revolves around illustration and animated film. To date, she has illustrated seventeen picture books and books by various authors (such as In a Bright Clearing in a Dark Forest by Slavica Remškar, The Mouse and the Blackbird by Marko Kravos, and The Ballerina and the Ice Cream by Slavko Pregl). She created a solo comic book based on the Resian folk tale titled Sleepy Ánzili (2023) and co-authored seven illustrated books. She regularly illustrates short literary works published in the children’s magazines Ciciban, Cicido, and Galeb. She has exhibited her illustrations on numerous occasions in solo exhibitions (e.g., in 2022, From Words to Images, Vodnik Homestead Gallery) and group exhibitions (e.g., Slovenian Illustration – An Unexpected Luxury at the Frankfurt Book Fair, And What Happened Next?  at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair). In 2025, all first-graders in Slovenian schools received Slavko Pregl’s picture book About the Boy Who Loved Birds featuring her illustrations, whilst The Boy Who Was Looking for a Cat that she illustrated as well was a gift book for all first-graders in the Municipality of Ljubljana in 2025 and 2026. In addition to illustration, she works in animated film. As a film animator, she has, among other things, collaborated for several years on the children’s animated series Prince Ki-Ki-Do, worked as the visual designer for the animated film Mr. Philodendron and the Apple Tree and later worked as an animator on films
directed by Špela Čadež (Steakhouse) and Zarja Menart (Three Birds). Since 2023, she has been working on an original animated film titled The Dung Beetle, produced by the Finta Film. She is also active as a mentor for numerous animated film and illustration workshops and as a guest speaker at discussions with authors at elementary schools and libraries. Since 2018, she has been working in a studio at ACC Metelkova mesto, where a sgraffito mural featuring her illustrations adorns the façade of the Garaže (Garages) building.

https://www.ankakocevar.com

Production: KUD Mreža • Coproduction and executive production,
coordination for CH0 Gallery (KUD Channel Zero): Eva Drašak • Editor: Ana Grobler • Curators: Ana Grobler, Sebastian Krawczyk • Text: Sebastian Krawczyk, Ana Grobler • Cooprganization: Nataša Serec, Lučka Zajc, Nurlama Vidrih, Dajana Šišić, Hana Černivec, Julija Najdovski, Peter Žiberna • Proofreading of Slovene language: Sonja Benčina • Translation: Ana Makuc • Design: Nurlama (Nuri) Vidrih • Thanks to: Forum Ljubljana • Financial support: The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City
Council Ljubljana, Department for Culture.