if these walls could talk
27. 8–24. 9. 2026

Artists: Krasimira Butseva, Ana Likar, Áron Lődi, Aaron Roth, Niya Tsenkova, Neja Zorzut

Curated by: ETC. & Vasil Vladimirov

Exhibition opening: Thursday, 27. 8. 2026 at 7 pm

Exhibition programme:

28 August at 8 pm: Viewing of the exhibition with the curators and the artists + VideoGarden

24 September at 6 pm: Final viewing of the exhibition with the curators

Physical spaces can serve as repositories of memories and material traces, accumulating the echoes of everything that has unfolded within and around them. A factory wall holds the residue of collective labour, a cathedral carries centuries of shifting belief and power, and a residential building represents the promises and failures of entire political systems. On the other hand, the intentional negligence of the maintenance of certain structures or their outright destruction points to historical erasure, in the face of which this particular absence becomes itself an agent of history. The exhibition if these walls could talk is situated between the physical remnants that surround and impact us and the speculative stories we project onto their surfaces.

In dialogue with ETC. Magazine’s fifth issue, Full Circle, the exhibition brings together six artistic positions that engage with material histories, (un)official archives and the layered constructions of cultural identity across regions shaped by systemic shifts, industrial transformation and recurring cycles of violence.

Aaron Roth explores the impact of property development on the cityscape, examining Bulgaria’s rapid shift from socialism to neoliberal capitalism through construction materials that symbolise commodification. His spatial installation illustrates how architectural memory becomes blurred and cultural markers are concealed, reflecting a development model in which heritage survives only if it can generate profit. The popular modernist principle “form follows function” is thus reframed to “form follows profit”.

In a similar approach, Áron Lődi engages with industrial transformation, focusing on Hungary’s iconic steel plant, Dunai Vasmű. The factory has borne witness to the country’s turbulent history, its walls carrying layer upon layer of past systems – from socialist industrialisation to authoritarian neoliberalism. Through installation, sculpture and writing, Lődi reimagines the tradition of industrial gothic, drawing on theories of Gothic Marxism and New Materialism to uncover the unfinished histories and unrealised futures still trapped within the factory’s halls. Combining fictional and factual narratives, he creates visual stories that address individual and collective agency in the face of today’s political realities.

Niya Tsenkova shifts the focus from the industrial and urban to the sacred. Her sculptural work considers the church, its rituals and the status of icons, connecting them to the contemporary art world. Having grown up among fresco painters, she spent her childhood immersed in artistic labour on scaffolding. Mystification has always been crucial to both religious practices and the art world, but Tsenkova focuses on the laborious process of creating these spaces, contemplating cultural heritage and the purpose of art through the visible traces of human work.

Ana Likar approaches preservation from another angle, questioning what enters the museum and what remains unseen. The idea for her video installation came from the discovery that a large part of the collection of the Slovenian Museum of Natural History is stored in a commercial complex. Her project cuts between animals posed in dioramas and those in storage, probing the boundary between display and concealment. The artist examines what makes its way into a museum, how it is categorised and where the boundaries lie between the preserved and the preserving.

Krasimira Butseva’s practice engages with the vacuum in Bulgaria’s communist legacy by unearthing the ways in which political violence operated and is transmitted across generations. Working across photography, archives, found objects and video, she constructs installations that exist as counter-narratives. By interweaving her own photographic work with state archives, she interrogates the legitimacy of these collections, created and then deliberately destroyed to serve narratives that enabled and legitimised violence. Through the recontextualisation of these materials, she reclaims them and proposes alternatives to a history that remains skewed and incomplete. The presentation echoes her non-linear methodology, deploying fragmentation to disseminate information excluded from official accounts.

Neja Zorzut’s work is rooted in an understanding of the body as a porous entity in constant exchange with the environment. Her floor installation features elements reminiscent of caltrops – weapons used since Roman times to restrict movement on the ground. The installation considers how a landscape can become a field of latent violence, revealing the tension between its apparent tenderness and the threat posed by its weaponisation. The work explores not only the historical means of militarising terrain, but also the ways in which violence imprints on the material conditions of existence. Focusing on the effect of warfare and weaponisation of the environment, Zorzut offers a historical perspective on cycles of violence embedded in the landscape and their effects across generations.

The works do not treat history as a linear succession of events but understand it as something constantly overwritten, partially erased, always awaiting reinterpretation, and as such capable of exerting a tangible impact on the present. The artists trace how large-scale political transformations become embedded in intimate experiences, inherited trauma, labour, language, the environment, the body and the material conditions of everyday life. In doing so, they ask: How can history be narrated and challenged through the exploration of the inherited material environment, or the lack thereof? And what can be discovered in the gaps that are omitted from official history?

Artists’ biographies:

Aaron Roth (1998) is a Los Angeles-born visual artist working in painting, installation, sculpture and photography. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London in 2021. His practice explores themes such as desire, the myths of nationalism and history, and the economics and corruption surrounding them. He lives and works in Sofia.

Áron Lődi (1996) is a Hungarian artist who received an MFA from the Dirty Art Department at Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2023. His practice spans a wide range of disciplines from sculpture, image-making and writing, to publishing and curatorial collaborations. Embracing the coalescence of horror stories and emancipatory possibilities, he creates multi-layered narratives about individual and collective agency in the face of contemporary crises. He lives and works in The Hague.

Niya Tsenkova (1999) is a multidisciplinary artist and graduate of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Her practice moves fluidly between painting, ceramics, metalwork and installation. Guided by intuition and craft, her works merge classical techniques with a contemporary visual language. Inspired by icons, idols and relics, Tsenkova reflects on how cultural heritage continues to shape our visual language. She lives and works in Sofia.

Krasimira Butseva (1994) is a visual artist and researcher based between London and Sofia. She completed a BA in Photography at the University of Portsmouth in 2016, followed by an MA in Photography in 2017. Her practice engages with the dynamics of remembering and forgetting, carrying and caring for memory, as she attempts to visualise traumatic experiences, the memory of spaces and landscapes, unofficial archives, and silent or silenced narratives. Her work is exhibited in gallery spaces and published in academic journals. She is currently Senior Lecturer at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

Neja Zorzut (1992) graduated in Painting from the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design, where she also completed an MA in 2020. Her work investigates hyperobject entities by focusing on the porous connection between the body and its environment, questioning how landscapes and atmospheres influence bodily existence and their potential to transform shared spaces into tools of manipulation or weaponisation. She is based in Ljubljana.

The exhibition is co-produced with ETC.

The Škuc Gallery programme is supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Ljubljana.