Marta Bartolj and Andreja Pogačar - Passing

“The exhibition combines illustrations and lamps of different sizes, made from waste paper (personal notes, bearers of past stories). The installation in the room is done in the form of corners, a white bench (chairs) is placed in the room, which symbolizes a point, a place to stop, think or pause for the visitor. The lights in the space create a mysterious, almost mystical atmosphere. With the light falling on the illustrations, stories, the cycle of birth and death, and the changes that are a constant in everyday life are revealed. Interestingly, the work of the illustrator is transformed into a digitally printed element that can be reproduced indefinitely, and the work of an industrial designer is a unique handmade product that is never reproducible in exactly the same form. “(Statement of the authors)

Marta Bartolj, illustrator. In 2011 she graduated from the School of Drawing and Painting in Ljubljana, and in 2016 she completed her master’s degree at the ALUO postgraduate study and received the ALUO student award for her master’s thesis (author’s book). This first author’s book is entitled Where Are You? was published in 2018 by Miš založba and for the same year it received an award for an excellent picture book without text as part of the Kristina Brenk awards. In 2021, Every Little Kindness is among the Editor’s pick on Amazon, then among the top 20 children’s books on Amazon for 2021, and in People Magazine among the top 10 books of 2021. In 2022, the book receives the American Ezra Jack Keats Honor Award.

Andreja Pogačar, an industrial designer, is currently completing her doctoral studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering in the field of sustainable packaging. Award-winning in the field of innovative packaging, associate of the Institute of Chemistry, self-employed in culture and founder of the startup company DodoPack d.o.o. She enjoys researching the reuse of used material and creating new products from it. She is a member of the winning team within the BIO26 project https://bio.si/en/challenges/3/, which has been awarded several times and is internationally exposed.

… The project of both authors could easily be set up individually, independently, but only in coexistence does the essence that both authors want to emphasize come to light. Passing, the inevitable cycle of life. A passing that is the same for man and nature. Passing, which in fact inextricably connects into the particles of nature, of which we are also a part. The passing that has been here from the very beginning is something that cannot be controlled. A life that is always, and an end that ends the liveliness and the eternally repetitive cycle” (text from the leaflet by curator Saša Bučan)