Nina Slejko Blom is an internationally recognised visual artist whose practice ties together the personal and the intimate with a critical stance towards the art world, its institutions and wider structures of power. She works in painting, installation and art publications, and occasionally produces picture books.

The exhibition entitled Blue Red Thread (I Was a Dog) is conceptually conceived as an overview of the artist's twenty-year painting practice. Contrary to expectations, however, the viewer will see very few paintings. Instead, the artist presents her oeuvre through a minimalist wall drawing, in which a blue line, applied directly to the wall with carpenter's chalk, follows a sparse selection of paintings, both new and archival, while deliberately omitting the majority of the rest. Most of the oeuvre is thus presented only through blue shadows, similar to those that remain on the wall once the paintings that once hung there have been removed. Nevertheless, some key archival paintings that mark important milestones in the oeuvre are available for viewing, but only as reproductions in the accompanying catalogue. The new production, represented by a small number of selected works depicting dogs, also refers back to earlier work as the artist uses them to symbolically mark her 20 years of work in the field of art, which she performs with the foolish devotion of a dog, persistently and docilely, grateful for the crumbs that have been thrown her way.

All listed strategies are intended to make the exhibition a decisive break with the past and direct our gaze towards the future. Its central element is the symbolic power of the blue thread – a motif that intertwines cultural, spiritual and metaphysical associations. In various traditions, blue thread evokes origin, lineage and ancestry, as well as the all-encompassing divine interconnectedness of all that exists. At the same time, it calls forth courage, wisdom and healing, therefore guiding us forward and opening new paths.

The blue thread culminates in the central painting in the exhibition – a glittering icon depicting a stylised shooting star and BLING! As befits icons, it is placed in the corner of an empty gallery space, where it becomes an object of devout worship. In the context of the artist's conceptual retrospective exhibition, it can symbolise artistic ideas, inspiration and creativity, that is, her ongoing search for a way forward, while also inviting viewers to reflect on what is sacred in a time when everything is commodified. In this context, however, the blue line drawn directly onto the walls becomes a bridge connecting the past with the future, the sacred with the secular and the personal with the universal.

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Nina Slejko Blom (1982) graduated in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana and obtained her master's degree at the Valand School of Fine Art in Gothenburg, Sweden. She is a member of the art collectives Pektin and Klara Sax. Independently and as a member of collectives, she has presented her work in over 250 exhibitions worldwide, for which she has received numerous awards and accolades. Alongside her art practice, she runs KLET Contemporary, a contemporary art gallery in Landskrona, Sweden, together with Swedish artist Conny Blom.
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