In her art practice, painter Ajda Kadunc challenges the anthropocentrism that has brought life on the planet to the brink of collapse. In contrast, her work highlights everyday situations as spaces of quiet resistance, alternative ways of perceiving and understanding the world, and fluid negotiations of coexistence between human and non-human life forms. In doing so, she leans on new theoretical definitions of nature, life processes, interspecies relationships and the dynamics between the domesticated and the wild, alongside everyday experiences of the living environment and practices, such as field research, collecting materials or simply walking and observing nature.

In constructing her works, she usually stems from drawings and paintings executed in a distinctive style marked by consummate subtlety, softness and blurred contours, a colour palette inspired by nature (sandy, earthy and green tones) and motifs reminiscent of indeterminate organic forms that often evoke a sense of movement, fluidity and suspension. Within the gallery space, she complements her paintings with installations that incorporate various mediums (video, sound, objects) and materials found in her everyday surroundings, archives and nature (beeswax, wood, moss, earth, mycelium). She always regards these materials as the sediments of the history of a particular place and, consequently, as bearers of meaning, knowledge and value. By arranging and combining materials into a new whole, she allows historical layers to unravel, thereby releasing hidden meanings which, through imagination, symbolism and association, lead to a different understanding of reality.

In the exhibition at hand, the artist presents new works in which she explores minute, almost imperceptible shifts that gradually bring about change in the environment. Rather than overt acts of resistance, she is interested in the persistence of minor transgressions that cannot be discerned at first glance, but only over time, when something is no longer where it is supposed to be or as it should be. The starting point for making the works is an archive of documented moments of resistance, which the artist has transformed into images of entities, that is, bodies, organisms, materials, tasks and interventions, which, when taken out of context, enlarged and presented in a fragmentary manner, become traces of something that has happened or is still happening. The exhibition as a whole therefore does not present a concluded narrative, but rather frozen moments in the process of its formation – reminding us of a simple principle that governs all processes in nature, yet one that we humans have long since forgotten: namely, that the journey itself is more important than the destination.

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Ajda Kadunc (1995) completed her Master’s degree in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2024. During her studies, she attended the Academy of Fine Arts at Uniarts Helsinki. She has presented her work in several solo exhibitions, including as part of the Art Critics’ Choice Series at Cankarjev dom (Ljubljana, 2025), at the 2^32 project space (Ljubljana, 2024, 2025), Tkalka Gallery (Maribor, 2024) and, in collaboration with Aleksandra Saška Gruden, Alkatraz Gallery (Ljubljana, 2023). Her work has also been shown in numerous group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad. She is the recipient of the OHO Award 2026. She lives and works in Šentvid pri Stični.