Likovni salon Gallery, 5. 6. – 6. 9. 2026
Lana Požlep is an interdisciplinary artist of the younger generation who started out in photography but does not limit her practice to a single medium. She creates spatial scenes and installations, in which she intertwines various media and materials; her latest projects show her turning to sound and the creation of sonic sculptures. In her artistic practice she explores the structure of the city, especially through the process of building and renovation that she understands as an expression of contemporary economic and political decisions. She is dedicated to examining the city’s identity and the question of who the city centre is actually intended for. In her long-term projects she focuses on which social practices and social classes are permitted in the reconstructed image of the city, and which are being ignored and pushed to the margins. She is also interested in taking care of the ecosystem and the value ascribed to its loss as well as how incorrect use of surfaces and agriculture contribute to this.
She also spent quite a period of time observing the so-called non-places, as defined by the anthropologist Marc Augé – spaces without a lasting identity, without social bonds. She chose a building site in the city centre and kept visiting it for a year, trying to understand through photography how an urban structure is created and, especially, to connect with the workers, the important and often invisible builders of city centres, whom she bonded with. What was originally an anonymous construction site became, for her, an intimate space for gathering and creating. In her 2022 project, entitled Armatura, she fused seemingly incompatible materials – photography, a metaphor for intimacy, and concrete, a cold, impersonal material – to translate the experience of a construction site. By creating objects, she produced a visual record in concrete and explored how photography can transcend two dimensions.
She is presenting her latest project, an experimental opera titled Opera for 14 Butterflies (2025‑2026), as a solo exhibition for the first time at the Likovni salon Gallery. In this piece, she addresses the disappearance of four butterfly species from the Ljubljana Marshes and, by extension, the impact of gentrification — linked to the boom in tourism — on the city’s residents. This time, her focus is on bureaucratic procedures, revealing how animal species are not recognized as an integral part of the institutional landscape. The artist intervened in the public space by persistently sending forms for deregistration of temporary residence to the local administrative office, listing the specific names of extinct butterfly species in the person’s “Name” fields in the forms. This gesture created a dilemma, as these entities do not exist in official registers. She used the forms as the basis for the opera’s musical score, weaving into the libretto anonymous personal testimonies and conversations she found online about the impact of the repurposing of residential areas on the local population. She presents the project as a spatial installation, transforming the gallery into an administrative warehouse to emphasise the impact of bureaucracy on everyday life. Office furniture fills the space, and the sound work Opera for 14 Butterflies resonates throughout. Through this transformation of the exhibition space, the artist invites the audience to engage in a sensory experience, encouraging them to reflect on the silent disappearance of life forms that co-create our shared space.
Lana Požlep (2000) is completing her graduate studies in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She furthered her studies at UMPRUM—the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague. She is a recipient of the Prešeren Prize for students from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design for the group project Ponjava 4. She has exhibited her solo work at P74 Gallery and the DobraVaga Gallery in Ljubljana, as well as at the Festival of Photography in Maribor and the Budapest Gallery in Budapest, where she was also an artist in residence. She has participated in several group exhibitions, such as Premiere – 5th Triennial of Young Artists (Gallery of Contemporary Arts Celje, 2022), Different Worlds (Photon Gallery, Ljubljana, 2022), Space with a Potentiality for a Shift (Moderna Galerija/Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 2024), and others. She was a member of the Kela collective in Ljubljana and served as an intern at Studio Selma Selman in Berlin and at the Tick Tack Gallery in Antwerp.
Text: Lana Požlep
Music accompaniment: Lana Požlep
Sound mastering: Jan Bajc Funa
Lyrics adaptation and score: Kristina Pervanje Vrčon
Choir: Mixed Choir of the Academy of Music Ljubljana under the mentorship of Alenka Podpečan
Soloists: Eva Kokot, Jan Jerman, Gorazd Ambrožič, Brina Vukovič
Special thanks: Barbara Jernejčič Fürst, Matic Pandel, Luka Šturm, Peter Rauch, Matej Stupica
Pokrajinski muzej Celje – Center sodobnih umetnosti
Curated by: Maja Hodošček
Text: Maja Hodošček
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Celje
