Institutional

His role joined artistic and executive responsibility. As Managing Director of Fotopub Festival, he shaped a programme centred on emerging practices, bringing younger artists into sustained contact with established practitioners and creating conditions for experimentation outside conventional exhibition formats. The festival worked across temporary sites in Novo mesto and connected exhibitions with workshops, performances, talks, publishing and a dense collective working environment.

In 2017 the association opened Fotopub Project Space in a disused petrol station designed by architect Milan Mihelič. As its Artistic Director, Smodej made the site a laboratory for direct exchange between artist, space and technician. Over five years it hosted 22 exhibitions, numerous public and private events, and studios for 18 local young artists, while testing materially and financially efficient ways of producing ambitious contemporary art.

Institution-building meant designing the structure behind the programme as carefully as the programme itself. Smodej built and coordinated a team spanning curatorial development, production, communications, design, technical work, legal support and accounting, while connecting Fotopub’s festival, exhibition, residency, educational and international programmes. As founder and director, he held long-term artistic and organisational strategy together with the practical work of financing, staffing, partnership-building and delivery.