IN THE INTERNATIONAL JURY FOR 35th LJUBLJANA BIENNALE OF GRAPHIC ARTS
THE 35TH LJUBLJANA BIENNALE OF GRAPHIC ARTS : FROM THE VOID CAME GIFTS OF THE COSMOS
LJUBLJANA BIENNALE
September 15, 2023 – January 14, 2024
Ljubljana, Slowenia
At the opening of the 35th Ljubljana Graphic Biennale, the international jury of the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, consisting of Bojan Piškur, Aziza Harmel, Raphael Chikukwa, Natalija Vujošević, Marie Helene Pereira and Zohra Opoku, announced the winners of the 35th Ljubljana Graphic Biennale.
The Grand Prize of the 35th Ljubljana Graphic Biennale was awarded to Tejswini Narayan Sonawane, a printmaker whose works reveal personal stories, emotional states, relationship dynamics and transformation. In a society where gender determines your freedoms, a certain inhibition of the self manifests itself in a loss of self-ownership. Many women in South Asia are confronted with such an existence, their lives determined by their male counterparts. These transitions of the Self as a migrant, are thus states of transformation as one aspires to grow, find pathways, liberate and educate.
Celebrating contemporary art and printmaking as a tool used to foster transcultural alliances, the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts explores the ecosystem of friendships, solidarities and unearthed histories of resistance between post-independence Ghana and the former Yugoslavia.
Across multiple sites, Artistic Director Ibrahim Mahama and his curatorial collaborators: Exit Frame Collective, Alicia Knock, Selom Koffi Kudjie, Inga Lāce, Beya Othmani and Patrick Nii Okanta, have invited artists and collectives from Africa, Europe and beyond, working in print, film, installation and performance, to present new and site-specific commissions alongside existing works.
Harnessing connections between contemporary art and printmaking within fields such as architecture, design, agriculture, botany and medicine, the Biennale reflects on the dissemination of broader visual culture to form spaces of potentiality and portals between localities that transcended borders.