You are kindly invited to the viewing of the exhibition with the artists and curator on Friday 7. 11. at 6 pm followed by the opening of the exhibition at 7 pm!
___________
Artists: H M Baker, Hamza Badran, DNLM, Odur Ronald, Robida, Sanela Jahić
Curator: Giulia Menegale
___________
Exhibition events
7. 11. at 6 pm: viewing of the exhibition with the artists and curator
8. 11. at 6 pm: viewing of the exhibition with the curator Giulia Menegale
9. 11. at 11 am: reading group and activation of the Robida Library
___________
We are living in a period when protests multiply yet seem to carry less and less weight in the eyes of governments and supranational institutions. While visibility is immediate, the structures of long-term solidarity, those that sustain political momentum, are fragile, difficult to build and harder still to maintain. Out of this climate arises a sense of impotence, one that has, at least for a time, characterised the year between my last visit to Ljubljana and today.[1] Over these months, taking to the streets in solidarity with Gaza has often felt faint, even futile, and many of the certainties surrounding life, including art, in democratic states seem to have eroded under resurgent far-right ideologies and censorship. These are the feelings to which Rewired Structures, Hidden Currents seeks to respond, not through impulse, but through careful reflection and deliberate attention.
The exhibition gathers practitioners from different contexts who navigate precarity, migration, urban neglect, borders and geographical liminality. They use these conditions as points of departure to imagine more inclusive ways of living. Its framework draws on the idea of “hidden currents”, a term from Verónica Gago (2017) and J.K. Gibson-Graham (1996, 2006),[2] to describe practices that move within power structures while quietly subverting them. It becomes a metaphor for the artists’ shared approach, which often shifts beyond the frame of art into lived experience.
The first space reflects on power as an embodied force. In Handshake (2025), Sanela Jahić translates biometric data from a corporate handshake into a single abstract line. A gesture of supposed trust becomes a diagram of asymmetry, exposing the hidden dynamics embedded in everyday rituals.
H M Baker’s The Big Time (2024), a two-channel video staged in a reconstructed office, follows four performers in business attire as they shift from routine gestures to stylised choreography. A voice-over blending yoga instruction with corporate jargon accompanies the movements. Baker calls this “Corporate Drag”: an exaggeration of professionalism that dismantles the ethos of productivity while opening space for refusal and transformation.
An ironic undercurrent also emerges in Hamza Badran’s Mass (2018). Once filled with symbols of resistance, Ramallah’s billboards now advertise luxury products. By removing and reinstalling these signs elsewhere, Badran reveals the gap between consumerist promises and daily realities in areas controlled by Israeli authorities, reclaiming public space as a site of contestation. The critique of national imaginaries continues in a dialogue between DNLM and Odur Ronald, who both question the blurred lines between personal and public spheres.
DNLM’s piece Leftovers (2024–25) addresses the fate of the Bežigrad Stadium, an iconic yet neglected site designed by Jože Plečnik. The artist collected samples from its pillars, placed them in a shopping trolley, and wheeled them through the city past preserved monuments. This quiet procession contrasts what is celebrated with what is left to speculation, highlighting the fragility of cultural memory caught between collective value and private profit.
Facing this work, Ronald’s Ffena (All of Us) (2023), part of the series The Republic of This and That, transforms passports into metallic booklets stamped with his own ratings of mobility. Stripped of authority, they expose the deep inequalities that govern who may move freely and who may not.
The exhibition concludes with the Robida collective, who have installed a radio station and a small library of their publications. Broadcasting sounds from their home in Topolò, a border village in Italy’s Benečija region, inhabited by the Slovene minority, and publishing texts shaped by translation, they turn marginality into a vantage point. Their activities (radio, editorial and communal) serve as tools for weaving connections across linguistic and cultural divides, reinforcing a multiform community always in the process of becoming.
Together, these works are not mere survival strategies. They are full proposals for co-living under different orders grounded in mutual agreements and empathic understanding. They are gestures towards emergent futures already unfolding in the present, hidden currents that flow beneath the visible structures of power. What unites them is not a shared style or medium, but an insistence on reimagining the social, political and cultural fabric from within. They show that even in times marked by tensions and apparent irreconcilabilities, subtle yet decisive acts of resistance and reconfiguration remain possible and are already at work.
Giulia Menegale
1 This exhibition grew out of a curatorial residency at Škuc Gallery in early 2024, which first resulted in the research exhibition 02_2024 (23 February – 17 March 2024). Available: https://www.galerijaskuc.si/si/exhibition/02_2024 [22 October 2025].
2 J. K. Gibson-Graham is the pseudonym under which Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson wrote until 2010.
___________
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Gago, Verónica. 2017. Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
- Gibson-Graham, J.K. 1996. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
___________
H M Baker (1989) is a British artist based in London. Her work examines labour, power and corporate rituals with feminist and critical perspectives. Exhibitions include MAXINE at Rathbone Institute, London (2025), CIRCA Prize shortlist and screening (2024), Ginny on Frederick, London (2024), SITE Gallery, Sheffield (2022), Roberts Institute of Art, London (2022) and Mimosa House, London (2019). She was a fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (2024).
Hamza Badran (1993) is a Palestinian writer, visual artist and cultural creator who lives in Basel and Amsterdam. He holds a BA in Contemporary Visual Arts from the International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah, and an MA from the University of Art and Design Northwestern Switzerland, Basel. He is currently an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. He has exhibited worldwide, including at Documenta Fifteen in Kassel in 2022; the Swiss Art Awards exhibition in Basel in 2023; and Regionale 20 and 22. He was awarded a two-year residency at the GGG Atelier in Basel from 2022 to 2024 and received the Kiefer Hablitzel │ Göhner Art Prize 2023 as part of the Swiss Art Awards.
Odur Ronald (1992) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kampala. His practice explores the possibilities offered by aluminium printing plates to address contemporary questions of power, movement, access, belonging and personhood. He has exhibited widely, including at the Kampala Art Biennale, Uganda (2018); East African Biennale, Tanzania (2019); East Meets East, The New Gallery / CoCuDI Center, Jerusalem (2020); The Collector’s Collection, Motiv, Uganda (2021); KLA ART 21, 32° East Ugandan Art Trust, Uganda (2021); Where the Wild Things Are, Afriart Gallery, Uganda (2021); Our Africa Our Future, African Union Headquarters, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2021); 14th Kaunas Biennial, Latvia (2023); Silent Invasion, Amasaka Gallery, Uganda (2023); Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2024); Liverpool Biennale, UK (2025); Liste Art Fair, Switzerland (2025); and FNB Art Joburg, South Africa (2025). Odur is the winner of the Mukumbya Musoke Art Prize (2020) and a recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Award (2020). He was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Art Prize (UK, 2022), where he received an honourable mention. His residencies include 32° East Ugandan Art Trust at Centre Soleil d’Afrique, Mali (2020); Silhouette Project Residency, Afriart Gallery, Uganda (2020); African Union Art Residency at Loman Art, Dakar, Senegal (2022); Gasworks, London, UK (2024); and The Revelation Art Prize residency, Ministry of Youth and Culture, Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2024).
Robida is a collective based in Topolò/Topolove, Italy, working at the intersection of editorial, radio and spatial practice. Since 2015, they have published Robida Magazine annually, exploring themes such as abandonment, silence and domesticity. In 2021, they launched Izba, a coworking and hospitality space, along with Radio Robida for their extended community. In 2022, they founded the Academy of Margins, creating encounters between central theories and marginal places.
DNLM / Danilo Milovanović (1992) is a Bosnian-born, Ljubljana-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice engages with urban space, social infrastructures and forms of resistance. Among others, his work has been presented at MSUM Ljubljana; 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts; 10th Triennial of Contemporary Art U3 at Moderna galerija Ljubljana; MMSU Rijeka; MSUV Novi Sad; BienalSur Montevideo; Neue Sächsische Galerie Chemnitz; Donumenta Regensburg; and Aksioma Ljubljana. He is the recipient of the Student Prešeren Award (2020) and the Rihard Jakopič Recognition (2025). He was also nominated for the Follow Fluxus Award (2024).
Sanela Jahić (1980) is a Slovenian intermedia artist exploring the relation between technology, labour and identity through kinetic and digital installations. Exhibitions include Aksioma Project Space, Ljubljana (2015, 2019); NeMe Arts Centre, Cyprus (2019); Cukrarna, Ljubljana (2021); Ars Electronica, Linz (2016); Gallery P!, New York (2016); Zhejiang Art Museum, China (2014).
Giulia Menegale (1995) is an independent curator, researcher and writer based in Venice, Italy. She is completing a PhD in analysis and management of cultural heritage at the IMT School for Advanced Studies and HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, where she investigates the legacy of institutional critique in contemporary art and curating. She has held curatorial and research positions with Casco Art Institute (Utrecht), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Autostrada Biennale (Kosovo) and Castello di Rivoli (Turin). Her recent writings include contributions to On Love Afterwards (2025), Milica Tomić’s monograph at Kunsthaus Graz and The Routledge Companion to Art Biennials (2025), edited by Panos Kompatsiaris. Her texts have also appeared in Flash Art, Contemporary&, Mousse Magazine and Arts of the Working Class.
___________
English proofreading: Arven Šakti Kralj
Slovene translation: Iva Jevtić
Slovene proofreading: Inge Pangos
Design: Lea Jelenko
Cover image: Hamza Badran, Mass, 2019.
___________
The project is supported by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Lubiana.
The programme is supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Ljubljana.
