Curated by ETC. Magazine, the programme shifts the focus to personal, political, and historical cycles, while asking what it means to come full circle by exploring the unstable terrain between the past and history, the former subject to nostalgia and mythologisation; the latter to institutional selectivity.
The programme outline is now live on our website, with more details to be added in the weeks to come. Stay tuned!
ABOUT ETC.
This year's edition of Ljubljana Art Weekend is once again curated by ETC. magazine collective, which also celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. Founded in 2021 by a collective of curators, gallerists and art professionals, the magazine is run by Hana Čeferin, Ajda Ana Kocutar and Lara Mejač. It is a Ljubljana-based publication and curatorial platform dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices from the Baltics to the Balkans, to promoting emerging practices and to critical engagement with contemporary art and its institutions. Each issue addresses pressing contemporary themes across essays, interviews, and artistic showcases, fostering critical discourse and cross-border dialogue.
ABOUT FULL CIRCLE
No matter how many times we vow not to repeat the mistakes and injustices of the past, we seem to do it regardless. This year, ETC. Magazine asks what it means to come full circle, exploring the unstable terrain between the past and history, the former subject to nostalgia and mythologisation; the latter to institutional selectivity. How much do structures of power shape remembrance and commemoration? What role do archives, memorials, and collective memory play, not only in mourning, but in mobilising? And how much of what we know about the past is fictionalised, mythologised or otherwise misshapen and manipulated? As algorithms increasingly curate our understanding of history, magnifying certain narratives while burying others, what role does technology play in reshaping collective memory? Meanwhile, modern warfare, defined by drone strikes and AI-driven systems, repeats age-old patterns of violence while excusing its users from accountability. It leaves us questioning whether technology reveals cycles of oppression or brings new ones into existence.
When history is reduced to a slogan, is the responsibility to heed its message reinforced or diminished? “Never Again” might be repeated in classrooms, museums, and hashtags, but what does it mean when genocides continue to unfold, now with the eyes of the world observing the horror in real time? How do we, as witnesses, navigate the space between moral clarity and political paralysis? In this issue, we wonder how not to succumb to feelings of helplessness, and what steps we can take to confront them. What does it mean to boycott, to refuse, as well as to act and be present, even when actions often feel small? In any case, the fight feels endless – countless historical examples precede the protests of today, and the rights people once struggled to obtain, the same ones we have perhaps come to take for granted, are under attack again and again.
Despite claims that we live in unprecedented times, there is much we could learn from history, past dynamics of power and forgotten stories. Full Circle invites us to consider the loop between memory and amnesia, past and present, reliving and erasing. During this year’s programme, we ask whether we are doomed to repetition or can we return to the past in order to rethink the future?
ABOUT THIS YEAR’S VISUAL IDENTITY
In Eva Bevec’s photographic series In Loving Memory of the seemingly joyful motif of flowers belies a deeper meditation on the inescapable cycles of repetition, ritual, and mortality. At first glance, the flower arrangements evoke a sense of springlike lightness and renewal, yet the fact that the photos were captured at Slovenian graveyards grounds them in the tradition of funeral flowers – a centuries-old practice meant to honor the dead and comfort the living. Chrysanthemums, lilies, gerberas, carnations and gladioli, typical Slovenian funeral blooms, are framed in the artist’s distinct visual language, which highlights everyday life, our habits and overlooked details, often verging on the absurd to expose deeper social dynamics. Each flower is charged with the symbolic weight of respect and sorrow unfolding as patterns of care and remembrance that repeat across generations. Commissioned for this year's edition of Ljubljana Art Weekend in response to the theme of Full Circle, the series is a reflection on how we collectively manage memory and amnesia, and the place of traditions between helping us to process loss and merely underscoring our tendency to repeat the same gestures, as a kind of social muscle memory.
Eva Bevec (1998) is a graphic designer, visual artist and photographer based in Ljubljana. She completed her BA in Graphic Design at UL ALUO (2020) and her MA in Information Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands (2023). She has exhibited her work at home and abroad (including Dutch Design Week, Biennale Brumen, Museum of Contemporary Art Meteklova +MSUM). In her practice, she employs the methods of essay film, documentary photography and archival research to question the seemingly everyday and banal aspects of her surroundings, disclosing deeper social, political and aesthetic issues.