BIO

Neja Zorzut (1992) graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where she also completed a master’s degree in 2020. In her practice, she negotiates the porous boundaries between painting and sculpture, object and surface, and the body and its environment. Her works draw from the ideas of ecological philosophy and speculative theories to explore hyper-object entities, hyper-occultation, atmospheric infrastructures, and the status of the body as modified by the forces of “ecology without nature.” Zorzut has presented her work in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Equrna Gallery, and Nova Pošta in Ljubljana, and elsewhere. She has also participated in group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad, such as Mud Keeper’s Promise at Kunsthalle Bratislava (2023), It Lingers in My Mouth Like Body Liquid Does at SLUG Gallery Leipzig (2023), Parasites – 36th Youth Salon at HDLU, Zagreb (2022), and Iskra Delta – 34^th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts at MGLC, Ljubljana (2021), among others. She was the recipient of the 2015/2016 student Prešeren Award from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana and the national Rihard Jakopič Award for Young Artists in 2022. She is based in Ljubljana.

WORK AT THE EXHIBITION

Miasma, 2021
oil and acrylic paint on canvas, polyester resin, copper

The term miasma refers to an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere filled with harmful particles, which in ancient and medieval times was believed to be a cause of diseases arising from decomposing organic matter. Although obsolete in its medical sense, the term is invoked here for its associations with atmospheric contagion to explore the idea and experience of the body as a porous entity, ceaselessly immersed in and influenced by its material environment.

Drawing on the feelings and fears tied to the miasmatic imagination, the work considers how elemental processes, such as breathing or ingesting, breach the separation between body and environment. Here the mouth is a wound mediating this both violent and life-sustaining exchange rendered as a process of mutual attack, contamination (think of air pollution or microplastics) and transformation. The encounter forms an in-between atmosphere, filled with the horror of destruction, but also movement and potential.

Miasma employs elements of painting, sculpture, and installation to draw attention to various surfaces, where relationships and notions of interiority and exteriority are negotiated and challenged. In this interplay, Miasma also entangles the body of the viewer. The process of looking turns from outside-in to inside-out and back again, complicating our position in relation to the work, at once an object and an environment. Yet the division persists, regardless of where we stand.  (Tjaša Pogačar Podgornik)