Group Exhibition
Autopornography on St. Nicholas’ Day
- Year
- 2020
- Role
- Co-curator with Duša Jesih and Roman Uranjek
- Context
- Nataša Berk, Viktor Bernik, Goran Bertok, Ištvan Išt Huzjan, Duša Jesih, Žiga Kariž, Tina Konec, David Nez, Neža Knez, Iza Pavlina, Mark Požlep, Franc Purg, Roman Uranjek, Tadej Vaukman, Aleksandra Vajd, Jara Vogrič, Nana Wolke
- Location
- Private apartment, Ljubljana, Slovenia
In the time of the global pandemic on one side and the right wing government of Janez Janša on the other, Slovenians could be free only through art, dreams or sex. The project Autopornography on St. Nicholas Day presented works of eighteen artists in a private flat under strict rules. The group of artists used different ways to move their practice into the field of pornography drawing inspiration from Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde. The famous piece was first seen by the public in 1988, more than a hundred years after it was made. Before that it was even hidden in a double frame by Lacan, covered by another painting by his cousin. Inspired by this story and the collaborative works of Koons and La Cicciolina Autopornography on St. Nicholas Day faced the artists and the selected viewers with the question of the difference between art and pornography and their ultimate connection. The intention of the project was to offer the artists a chance to create a radical work of art combining their artistic practice with their fantasies or depicting their most private sexual moments. The exhibition was open to a selected public of a hundred people for four days and therefore formed a safe space for unexpected experimentation and freedom of honest and radical artistic expression.
The exhibited works were never exhibited in public. The artists and collectors committed they will not publish the artworks for 10 years after the exhibition closed.