 Jan 30 2025 - Jun 1 2025

 Ljubljana

Works by fifty artists exploring Ljubljana's urban identity and its changes through time, including the recent decades of gentrification, are on show at the Metelkova Museum of Contemporary Art in an exhibition titled Picture (a) City.

The works deal with issues such as the city's heritage and its role in the modern city, environmental challenges, the increasing influence of corporate and economic interests, and the loss of the commons.

"This submission to private interests in particular degrades public space, both in terms of quality of space and environmental concerns. In recent years, this has become increasingly evident in peripheral European cities such as Ljubljana," curator Igor Španjol says.

For him, the city, rather than being a space of sovereign and participatory decision-making on public goods, and of concern for the welfare and interests of its people, is turning "into a backdrop, a set for some kind of parallel show."

The city as a spectacle that has become a mere picture of a city but lost its basic functional elements is juxtaposed in the exhibition with the city as an arena of imagination, vision, critical representation, and thinking.

The works come from public and private collections and are combined with new artistic production and theoretical works.

The featured authors include renowned artists and collectives such as IRWIN, Nonument Group, Tadej Pogačar and Marjetica Potrč, and up-and-coming artists.