3 + 3 = 6
Three women artists, three art practices, six decades – Part Two
Artists: Ana Nuša Dragan, Zemira Alajbegović, Ema Kugler
Curated by: Barbara Borčić, Peter Cerovšek
Production: SCCA-Ljubljana 2021
Exhibition Part Two: Project Room SCCA, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana: 21 September – 8 October 2021
Exhibition Part One: The City Hall Glass Atrium, Mestni trg 1, Ljubljana: November – December 2020
The exhibition is open from Tuesday to Friday between 11am and 3pm. On view until 8 October.
You are cordially invited to the opening of the second part of the exhibition 3 + 3 = 6 Three women artists, three art practices, six decades on Tuesday, 21 September, 2021, at 7 pm in the SCCA Project Room at Metelkova 6.
Attending the exhibition opening is permitted only with a negative PCR or RAT test result or a medical certificate of recovery or vaccination.
The exhibition presents video works, films, objects and documents by three women artists who were/are active in the field of action/performance, film and video art in Slovenia. Costumes, posters, flyers, catalogs, photographs, texts, critics and other paraphernalia from private archives, archives of SCCA and the MGLC archives will be on display.
The beginnings of their activities date back to different periods of the 20th century: the 1960s (Dragan), the 1980s (Alajbegović) and the 1990s (Kugler). They have always worked in collaboration with numerous artists and in tune with the challenges of time, either in frame of socialist system or the one of liberal capitalism. The specific conditions of production have thus largely defined their artistic practices, ranging from Conceptual and Alternative to Post-Modern Art. After a period of different collaborations – from groups to doubles – the overall authorship became a distinctive feature of their practices. The film / video was a central expression asset for them, and the basis for it is often a live event, from happening and action to performance. Their distinctive narration is moving from documentary and performance to poetic.
Research, documentation and archiving of artistic opuses is one of the key program orientations of the SCCA-Ljubljana, especially those who have not yet received a comprehensive handling. With the project, we want to provide access to information, documents and works of art, initially in physical form at the exhibition, then also in a common online repository, www.forgottenheritage.eu. Artworks and events are all too often disappearing in oblivion and are deleted in a historical – personal and collective – memory. Archiving is based on the model of the documentation, archivist and research project Videodokument: Video art in Slovenia 1969-1989 (1999-2000), international seminars and workshops of Archiving Practice (2005-2021) and the DIVA Station, which allows access to information and media / video works from Slovenia in the Project Room SCCA and through the on-line archive www.e-arhiv.org/diva.
PHOTOGALLERY
Exhibition opening, photo: SCCA-Ljubljana archive
Exhibition view, photo: Janez Zalaznik
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Ana Nuša Dragan (1943 – 2011) graduated from the Sociology and Psychology departments of the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. She specialised in television and video media at the British Film Institute in London in 1972, and received a scholarship from the French government in Paris in 1984. Between 1967 and 1988, she worked in short film and video art together with Srečo Dragan. Since 1988, she had been creating in the domain of video art and TV documentaries on her own. She worked as the Head of the Media Education at the Educational Technology Department in the National Education Institute.
Zemira Alajbegović (1958) graduated from Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. From 1982 to 1988, she was a member of the FV (112/15), multimedia and theatre group and of FV Disco club that worked on the Ljubljana subculture scene and this was where and when she also started to work in video. In the 1980s, she co-founded the video production FV Video and FV Label, the first independent music and video publishing house in Yugoslavia. From 1983 to 1989, she was a member of the Borghesia group (multi-media performances, video clips). In collaboration with Neven Korda, she was the author of numerous video films, music videos and dance videos. In recent years, she has directed documentaries and TV shows on art and culture. Since 2011, she has been working as a journalist and editor in the cultural sector of Radio Television Slovenia.
Ema Kugler (1955) graduated at the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana. In 1980s, she worked at alternative Radio Student in Ljubljana and collaborated in numerous multimedia projects and alternative fashion shows. Her field of interest covers different media: performance, installation, film, video, and theatre costume design. She works as a freelance director, screenwriter, scenographer, costume designer, editor, and a multidisciplinary artist with unique artistic expression. She is the author of five feature films, numerous video and short films, performances, and art installations.
The exhibition is a part of the European project Not Yet Written Stories – Women Artists’ Archives Online (2020–2022), which focuses on women artists who have often been overlooked in the history of contemporary art and will create, through research, archives of artists available in a common online repository.
The most important activities of the project will be related to the field research of audio-visual material, documents and works of art as well as workshops, interviews, talks, presentations, and exhibition. We will try to demarcate the specifics of works of art and stories of the artists, and to compile and connect specific (interrupted / suppressed / disregarded) histories in collaboration with various key experts (writers, artists, archivists, critics, curators). The result of the research will be organised documentation, international conference, publication and archive in the common repository.
Participants of the Not Yet Written Stories project in Ljubljana: Barbara Borčić & Peter Cerovšek (project managers); Zemira Alajbegović, Ema Kugler, Barbara Borčić, Ida Hiršenfelder, Rok Kajzer Nagode, Blaž Lukan, Borko Radešček and Jake Yuzna (presentations & workshops).
Organization: SCCA-Ljubljana / DIVA Station
Partners: Fundacija Arton (Warsaw), Ured za fotografiju (Zagreb), Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (Riga)
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