Klara Kracina is a visual artist working in painting, printmaking, drawing, comics and installation. In her practice, she explores everyday social life, with a particular focus on questions of identity, national consciousness, collective memory and nostalgia. In this, she frequently draws on references from pop culture, using a documentary approach, critical distance and subtle irony in their pictorial interpretation.

The point of departure for this exhibition is the phenomenon of soap operas and their influence on contemporary spectacle society. In Slovenia, this phenomenon began with Esmeralda, a Mexican telenovela from 1997. Although it was not the very first – La Escrava Isaura [The Slave Isaura] holds that distinction, followed by Dallas, Dynasty, Santa Barbara, as well as others – it is considered by far the most successful soap opera in the country. According to data from POP TV, during its first broadcast in 1998, the series was watched daily by up to 300,000 viewers. It even received a Viktor Award for Best Telenovela and was later rerun several times. Owing to its remarkable success, the lead actress, Leticia Calderón, visited Slovenia. She was greeted at the airport by a large crowd of fans, toured the country’s main tourist attractions and visited major cities, where she distributed autographed flyers to her admirers. Her visit was also documented in a book entitled Esmeralda, The Queen of Slovenian Hearts, which was the main inspiration for the exhibition.

The exhibition is divided into three parts, following the layout of the gallery space. The first space features an installation comprising a picture of the actress surrounded by security guards and fans, a bouquet of flowers, and flyers to be autographed, which serves as a kind of time capsule, transporting us back to the period of her arrival in Slovenia. The second space displays three pictures – two showing Esmeralda from the opening credits of the telenovela and one showing actress Leticia Calderón holding a copy of the Slovenske novice newspaper – set against a green velvet curtain typical of cultural centres in the Slovenian countryside. The third space recreates a typical living room from the second half of the 20th century, with a few basic pieces of furniture, a television without a signal and a framed USB stick containing all 137 episodes of the telenovela, basically yet another time capsule, transporting us back to the era when Esmeralda was broadcast on television.

Passing through the three spaces, the viewer first learns about the rituals surrounding the arrival of the actress, the public adoration and the expressions of devotion shown by her fans; then about the process by which the actress became identified with her soap opera character, as well as her adoption and domestication within the Slovenian cultural sphere; and finally about the phenomenon from a longer temporal perspective, which reveals, on the one hand, its inscription into collective memory and, on the other, its inevitable descent into oblivion.

To sum up, the exhibition uses the example of Esmeralda/Leticia Calderón to explore the process of creating (and forgetting) a pop culture icon, the various ways in which she has been idealised and appropriated, the role of the mass media in this process, the relevance of such a phenomenon over time, and, last but not least, its influence on artistic practices (fan art). Although the theme is treated with considerable irony, it also evokes a sense of nostalgia – not for the telenovela and its time, but time itself – how would it even be possible today for us to sit ourselves down on the sofa every afternoon, at the same time, for four and a half months, and surrender ourselves for three quarters of an hour to (the same) fantasy …

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Klara Kracina (1999) graduated in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Ljubljana in 2022, where she is currently completing her master's degree in Painting. She has presented her work in solo exhibitions, including at the DobraVaga gallery in Ljubljana (2019, 2023), the Media Nox gallery in Maribor (2024), and the Ex Arte gallery in Ljubljana (2024), as well as in several group exhibitions at home and abroad, the most notable being the 35th Biennale of Graphic Arts, MGLC, Ljubljana (2024), where she participated as part of the Kvadratni meter / Square Meter collective. She is an active member of the Podmladek art collective and a co-founder of the Kvadratni meter / Square Meter art activist collective, in which she was active from 2019 to 2024. She lives and works in Ljubljana.
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