NINA TOVORNIK: Arts Lead the People [Supernova cycle]
light installation
Valvasor Park // until 14 June
OPENING: Friday, 23 May, at 9:30 p.m.

The work Art Leads the People is a reworking of a poster by artist Nikolaj Pirnat, Female Partisan Is Attacking (1944), which is itself an interpretation of Delacroix’s painting Freedom Leads the People (1830). The continuation of this chain of reinterpretations is crucial because it highlights the importance of the historical lessons that have been learned many times before about the inevitability of conflict in class stratified societies and warns us against the danger of blindly following existing social dynamics. The product of these dynamics is expressed nowadays in the many hardships felt by workers in unregulated working conditions, including in the field of art. The content present in all three iterations of the image – freedom, female partisan, female artist – is resistance. I understand resistance as a form of disturbance, as it interrupts the established order of things and requires the expansion of the mental horizon. The image of the female artist is a symbol of such an insight, which is acquired with the interpretation of social forces and circumstances. /N. Tovornik/

NINA TOVORNIK (1995, Ljubljana) is a sculptor of a younger generation. Her most famous works are the public sculptures entitled Piece of Work in Vrhnika and Black – The World in Small in Črna na Koroškem. Both works received the Prešeren Award of the University of Ljubljana in 2022. As the winner of the Forma viva Ravne+ competition, she presented her first solo exhibition Metonymies at the Ravne Gallery in October 2024, and has also participated in numerous group exhibitions.