Sculptor Marko Pogačnik gets prestigious UNESCO title
One of the missions of UNESCO Artists for Peace is raising the public's awareness about UNESCO's activities and goals.
Pogačnik will be involved in UNESCO projects for two years, but will keep the title for life.
A sculptor and conceptual artist, he will be active mostly in connecting people with the biospehere, a field he has been focusing on in his work.
He will address a world congress on biospehere reserves in Peru's Lima in March, and head a UNESCO global conference on geoparks in Torquay, UK, in September.
In late spring or early summer, he is to return to the Burren geopark in Ireland.
Among the famous people holding the title are conductor Valery Gergiev, architect Zaha Hadid and musician and former Brazilian Culture Minister Gilberto Gil and the World Orchestra for Peace.
Born in 1944, Pogačnik graduated from the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design in 1967.
Pogačnik, whose work has significantly marked the Slovenian art scene in the 1960s and 1970s, was one of the pioneers of land art in Slovenia.
He was a founder and a prominent member of the OHO group of artists and authors, which was active between 1966 and 1971.
Together with his wife and three daughters, he has developed lithopuncture, a method of Earth healing through the erection of statues ornamented with cosmogrammes.
He considers this an approach alternative to the scientific ecology, which takes care only of material levels of the Earth.
Pogačnik has also written several books, which have been translated into many languages, and has designed the Slovenian coat of arms.
He received the Jakopič Award, the highest award for fine arts, in 2008.
In 1991, he was honoured with the Prešeren Fund Prize for a retrospective at the Modern Gallery in Ljubljana.
Bokova conferred the title of Artist for Peace upon him in Paris on Friday.