Attending the inauguration of the 36th Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts/grafični biennale Ljubljana, a small biennial in a small city, in a relatively small country, with a very small budget, already feels like holding on to something that is being pulled apart by polarization and self-interest—such is contemporary art. What matters, in Ljubljana, is this return to presence and to holding on—to each other, and to culture.
This year’s title, Oracle/Orakelj, arises from the instability of the moment. Historically, oracles were communal tools to manage uncertainty and desire. The biennial offers itself as such a device—a site where art responds to urgent questions.
One of artistic director Chus Martínez’s favorite books is Huckleberry Finn, a tale of friendship and freedom forged through unlikely solidarity. Mark Twain’s anti-conformist narrative mirrors the biennial’s ethos: “It’s half true and half a kind of productive fiction. If you ‘cheat’ in the right direction—guided by the right values—you can create a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Martínez says.
To curate a biennial in dialogue with Ljubljana’s history means speaking with its ghosts—not only archives, but living testimonies and artistic collaborators, such as curator Olga Subirós (responsible for the architectural exhibition design) along with her team at the Institut Kunst in Basel, and her partner and long-time collaborator, Ingo Niermann.
Founded in 1955 during the Cold War, the biennial served once as a cultural bridge between East and West. This year, the biennial is reimagined as a civic gesture—proposing a model of small-scale collectivity that aims for large-scale resonance. The biennial unfolds across four venues, each forming a chapter and based on themes including care, exhaustion, autonomy, and the tension between media and meaning.
Fig.1
“Intellectual Courage”: Museum of Modern Art (MG+)
A key figure in this year’s biennial is Žogica Marogica (“Speckles the Ball”), a beloved puppet heroine created in 1951 by Ajša Pengov. In her tale, the little ball rolls away from home to explore the world, helping others along the way. Pengov—a pioneer of puppet theater—designed her as an “autonomous puppet,” using long strings and mirrors to challenge traditional modes of control. The innovation carried both feminist force and technical brilliance.
Martínez, initially skeptical of the relevance of puppetry today, began to ask herself: what if puppets, rather than being relics of earlier forms of theater, offered a medium through which we could reflect on autonomy in the digital age? This and other questions arise as we walk through the Biennial’s venues. For example, how is it that we’re all so exhausted, so fed up—and yet nothing ever seems to really happen? Maybe the answer lies in what she calls “our exhausted collectivity.”
Such exhaustion is echoed in works by the Ukrainian artists Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei. Their project reprograms a robotic dog—originally designed for combat—to perform as a benign companion in a Ukrainian town displaced by war. The result is a heartbreakingly tender 20-minutes film: a machine of death becomes an allegory of social healing. Theirs is a reimagination of puppetry as technological redemption.
Fig. 2
At MG+, Noor Abed presents an almost empty room for The Stick (2024), a poetic reflection on Palestinian landscapes reclaimed through rhythmic collectivity, in which choreography becomes a tool and the stick a prosthesis of the body. Used for support and defense, the stick stands between an ephemeral heritage and preservation of rituals, care and violence, echoing Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial writing on bodily extensions in Black Skin, White Masks (1952).
The Stick is followed by a forest composed of arboreal installations by Nohemí Pérez and Jane Jin Kaisen. In Kaisen’s film November, a blue hour unfolds in reverse time as the moon wanders through the sky—a metaphor for regression and unlearning. Pérez weaves extinct insects onto trees drawn on untreated canvas with charcoal. Their work unsettles linearity, evoking Walter Benjamin’s conception of the Angel of History blown into the future while gazing at the past. It’s as if time wishes to undo itself.
Of the 25 participating artists, 23 involve new commissions, two are historical inclusions. One of these latter is the work of Aili Vint, who draws on the aesthetics of 1960s computing to conjure speculative continuities rather than retro-futurist nostalgia. Her monochrome grids and simulated machine vision offer cartographies of futures nested within the obsolescence of past technologies, all while mapping where we might still go by reimagining where we once thought we were heading.
Meanwhile, Juan Perez Agirregoikoa’s mural stretches across an entire wall of Moderna, broadcasting slogans, diagrams, and self-analytical prompts in a darkly comic sprawl. Like an anarchic mind map, it pulses with the tension between control and absurdity. It is loud without being disruptive. At the end of the gallery corridor, Mladen Stropnik’s mirror installation nods to Michel Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia: a site that is both real and illusory, reflecting and distorting the world it contains. These mirrors are not simply for self-recognition, but for glimpsing the contradictions of presence, of being here and elsewhere at once.
Fig. 3
“Imagining for Real”: The City Art Gallery Ljubljana
Despite not being an expert in graphic arts, Martínez embraced the curatorship nonetheless. The term permeates the exhibitions as a historical anchor, inviting the question of how graphic traditions mutate under algorithmic visual culture.
Ingo Niermann and Mayte Gómez Molina’s Hieroglyphs of the Monadic Age speaks directly to this kind of mutation. Their animated glyphs blend diagrammatic abstraction with sociological speculation, expanding on Niermann’s theoretical fiction project The Monadic Age (2024), where liberal individualism dissolves into a world of monads, following the terminology of Gottfried Leibniz—self-contained entities shaped for fragmented futures. These glyphs—which nod to the dual figure of the oracle and the puppet Žogica Marogica—act as semiotic agents. They signal a post-human subjectivity, where symbolic forms no longer mirror familiar relationships but instead encode new social grammars with uncanny precision.
A similar interplay between the visible and the encrypted unfolds in the wall paintings of Saelia Aparicio. Her spinning, oversized eyes—bulging from distorted figures and surveillance cameras—mirror the installation space to create a field of visual disturbance. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, Aparicio inserts convex mirrors to fracture normative perception. That which is grotesque, rejected, or deformed becomes an aperture—giving a straightforward revision of what we see, and how we are seen.
The recalibration of perception also informs Nicole L'Huillier’s The Rehearsal Room, a sonic architecture where listening precedes understanding. I fell asleep there before realizing it was meant to be the core of the exhibition. It is built around a heart drum that pulses into the unconscious. Trained in both visual art and sound engineering, L'Huillier composes an acoustical space where resonance becomes a social method. Through improvisation and call-and-response, the work performs a rethinking of community—echoing Fred Moten’s notion of the ensemble as a mode of Black sociality: one rooted in polyphonic attunement rather than a singular identity, in sounding together rather than speaking as one.
Fig. 4
“Meshwork, Magic and Emotions”: MGLC Grad Tivoli
Each entrance to the four biennial venues is framed by the sculptures of Silvan Omerzu, whose works are rooted in Slovenia’s puppetry tradition, and the poems of Svetlana Makarovič, a major literary voice in the country. These site-specific pairings transform the thresholds into portals: each one is equipped with its own poem and sculptural composition, sliding you into a new world and offering a heightened state of perception. At MGLC, housed in Grad Tivoli—the oldest building in Tivoli Park—the non-human manifests throughout.
Gabi Dao’s Sweet Blood in Stagnant Waters, winner of the biennial’s residency prize, delves into epidemic imaginaries and queer ecologies through a hybrid film and puppetry installation. Mosquitoes appear as carriers—not of disease, but of alternate mythologies—delivering folklore steeped in decay, yet vibrating with reclaimed meanings.
Throughout the entire second floor, the works of Gabriel Abrantes and CANAN reflect each other like refracted opposites. They are interrupted only by Manuela Morales Délano’s stone sculptures. Her forms, adorned with salvaged metal fragments—recalling both militaristic plumage and anti-pigeon spikes—stand like two sphinxes, or a wounded couple, lodged between redemption and ruin, gazing at the park.
CANAN’s Kiymeti Zatiyye (Intrinsic Value) unfolds across four rooms, illuminating a narrative arc moving from withdrawal to compassion, from pity to self-worth. Sequined sculptures shimmer in a space permeated by a voice whispering truisms on architectural and emotional transformation. The work insists on a serenity that detaches itself entirely from suffering. “I don’t believe in the existence of pain beyond one’s perception,” CANAN told me, as we chatted in the heat.
In contrast, Abrantes’ Bardo Loops dives straight into the unbearable. A four-channel video-musical installation—each screen a vertical slab mimicking an oversized smartphone—stages the dissolution of a ghost couple. It’s a breakup told across four arenas, or four stadiums of feeling, evoking the Buddhist notion of the bardo: the liminal state between death and rebirth. Shards of dialogue hit like mantras in a loop: “I don’t speak to fascists.” “I’m not in love with you anymore.” “How can you deny me the wish of a baby?” “Nobody loves me.” The ghosts drift through post-apocalyptic landscapes, singing ballads of loss and defiance.
Fig. 5
“The Secret Solution for World Peace”: MGLC Švicarija
At Švicarija, the so-called “Swiss House,” Omerzu’s puppets greets you again—this time reflecting the building’s own layered history: from its origins in 1909 as a hotel and artistic hub to a site general refuge, and now, a house of metaphors. Devil statues with exaggerated phalluses, angelic guardians, and wheelchair-bound dolls conjure salvation’s complexity.
Joan Jonas offers something dense, mercurial, and puppeteered in some way, deeply involved in a healing process. It is a video gifted to her by the marine biologist David Gruber: the first recording ever made of the birth of a whale. There have been countless recordings of whale sounds, but none of this moment. The viewer watches a baby whale being born, while all the aunts of the pod hold it at the surface for several minutes—so it can learn to breathe.
Such acts of collective holding form the emotional altar of the exhibition. It is reinforced in the works of artist Vesna Petrešin and her father, Eugen Petrešin. Eugene has long been developing a sustainable energy device designed to work with the flow of rivers—without using dams—and potentially to be capable of providing energy autonomy to entire communities. If successful, it could radically shift the very architecture of global power. This edition of the Biennial is dedicated to that vision of energy, and to Vesna, who passed away just days before the opening. Her thinking—centered on care, rhythm, and the essential need for pause—has left a lasting imprint.
Fig. 6
“A Flower I Will Become”: Tivoli Park
Since the early 2000s, much has been said about the blossoming of biennials. Often framed as large-scale events detached from everyday life—nomadic spectacles producing a globalized image—they have also reinforced the perception of culture, especially contemporary art, as elitist. It’s time to rewrite that narrative. To revisit local initiatives—those that, while aspiring to openness, primarily address nearby communities: a neighborhood, a city, a region. In a time when fewer and fewer can afford to travel, how can we return to—and learn from—tactics forged in the 1950s?
Tivoli Park, a living artwork in itself, hosts the Jakopič Promenade—an outdoor gallery conceived in the 1930s by Jože Plečnik. Here public panels function as historical markers and spaces for communal reflection. The Promenade echoes a tradition of open-air pedagogy, transforming the park into a green agora, alive with memory, encounter, and dialogue.
Ljubljana, like a cat with nine lives, continuously reinvents itself through its layered histories—not least among them, its role in the Non-Aligned Movement. As a founding NAM capital, its Biennale—established in 1955—was a stage for cultural diplomacy and global exchange. That spirit of inclusion still pulses beneath the city’s surface.
Sinzo Aanza, an artist attuned to the symbolic and literal dimensions of NAM and its affiliated nations, draws on its core values, such as anti-imperialism, economic sovereignty, and cultural decolonization. His pathway through the Promenade reframes spatial relationships between countries using metaphors from geopolitics. His drawings amalgamate resistance, reading figures including Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and other major figures from 20th century literature and diplomacy as prisms for confronting both historical and contemporary totalitarianisms.
Aanza’s work asks us to assess a biennial not only by what it represents, but by what it does. And to recognize that what it does depends on us. What do we want these exhibitions to do? How do we want them to perform—and for whom? What kind of dialogue are we trying to create? And why might we consult an oracle to find out?
Fig. 7
The word oracle stems from orality. And orality is key to the answers offered in Ljubljana. Now orality is regaining its power—not as simplification, but as a profound mode of transmission. The oracle is rooted in spoken prophecy. Can biennials become something like that? Sites of social pedagogy?
A floating, unsettled fabric canopy by Kathrin Siegrist—constructed from modified emergency parachutes—suggests that yes, such a thing is possible. The artist, who is also a lecturer at the Kunst Institute in Basel, inverts the pyramid form, transforming a symbol of power into a vessel of openness. Beneath this ephemeral structure, the voice of Maria Arnal invited everyone to sing in time and in tone with her. She played an ancient Indian instrument, breathing through what looked like a book made of paper walls. Through our voices, chants unfolded—like a blessing for spaces ready to receive their visitors.
Arnal’s practice is oral, and not just melodic. It navigates the inner and outer voice, fusing ancient languages with contemporary technologies. Her presence across venues activated the voice as a social and spiritual force—shaping identity, territory, and collectivity, all while linking the visitors’ voices with the exhibitions through resonance.
“No event exists in isolation,” said Chus Martínez, emphasizing that an exhibition must not be seen as a hermetically sealed, temporary occurrence, but rather as part of the everyday life of Ljubljana. She couldn’t be more right. Every biennial, every exhibition, emerges from and returns to a context. We need to reconnect with these supporting contexts. For too long, we’ve presented creativity in fragments—critical of authorship, skeptical of monumentality. But in 2025, there is a return to the visionary. To the singular voice—not necessarily the heroic artist, but perhaps the unique community, the collective voice, the force of people together.
Can a biennial do the building? No, but it can instigate it. If this exhibition generates interest, it will be because it activates people—and, in being activated, they activate others. This is a matter of the language we use. Skepticism has a role to play—but only if it clears the way for what Martínez calls “radical optimism.”
Fig. 8
This sense of quality revealed itself vividly during my visit to Anselma—a women-led tailoring collective working with recycled fabrics and century-old patterns. There, at least ten other Biennale guests browsed joyfully through garments made by school students during the collective learning sessions. In their hands, these clothes carry more than style; they revive a forgotten texture in textiles—materials once commonplace, now rare due to the overextraction of natural resources and industrial overproduction.
As the Biennale’s most fulfilled prophecy, Tarta Relena (Marta Torrella and Helena Ros)—a Barcelonès duo working together since 2016—performed És Pregunta (which I read as “Being Question”) at sunset in the park. It marked their third time singing in Ljubljana. Through a cappella traditions, they braided ancient Mediterranean chants with synthesized compositions, interweaving Catalan, Spanish, Italian, Latin, and Ladino. Moving between sacred and secular registers, their voices gently dismantled the binaries that still separate art forms and genres. It is between the ancient and the contemporary that their music seeks new meanings—and new languages—with which to face the future.
My memory of these days is one in which I allowed myself to feel optimistic. I felt somehow lighter. I breathed deeply.
- Credits
Cover: Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa/ Fig.1: Ajša Pengov's Žogica Marogica/ Fig. 2 Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei / Fig.3: Ingo Niermann and Mayte Gómez Molina/ Fig. 4: Nicole L'Huillier/ Fig.5: Gabriel Abrantes / Fig.6 Silvan Omerzu/ Fig.7: Kathrin Siegrist / Fig.8: Tarta Relena
All images: Courtesy 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts 2025 / Details to every artwork will be updated soon
