Exhibitions in Ljubljana worth a weekend trip

Discover deeper layers of Ljubljana on your next visit to this perhaps not the largest or most developed, yet highly intriguing European city. Ljubljana is close enough to always allow for an easy weekend getaway within the region. And as you plan and coordinate your travel itinerary, do not forget, alongside tempting gastronomic destinations and nightlife spots, to include five outstanding exhibitions that will enrich your experience of this beautiful Slovenian capital.

Art is always the next option: Yoshio Nakajima

The exhibition Art is always the next option at Galerija Vžigalica offers a retrospective insight into nearly seven decades of artistic practice by Yoshio Nakajima (b. 1940), one of the key protagonists of the Tokyo avant-garde scene of the 1960s and early performance art. His oeuvre, strongly marked by the influence of the Fluxus movement, has from the outset been nourished by a belief in the individual, the community, and the possibility of art acting as an agent of change.

As early as the late 1950s, Nakajima was performing and connecting with Fluxus circles and the Gutai group, soon becoming an inseparable part of the legendary Tokyo avant-garde scene. In 1964 he moved to Europe and studied at the art academy in Rotterdam, where he collaborated with the Provo movement. His European path continued in Antwerp and, by chance, later in Sweden, where in 1972 he co-founded the Ubbeboda art center, a radically non-institutional space without hierarchies, funding, or conventional exhibition formats.

The Ljubljana exhibition brings together early works with Nakajima’s current artistic practice, characterized by a pronounced multimedia approach. Paintings, performances, and processes intertwine into a continuum in which the boundary between art and life disappears. While his early performances drew attention to ecological and social threats of the contemporary world, his mature period increasingly emphasizes the protection of Earth and human life through art, with the intensity of a missionary or shaman. The exhibition Art is always the next option invites visitors into Nakajima’s universe, which for seven decades has been persistently built on the conviction that art can change the individual, and that these changes can lead to a better tomorrow.

Where? Galerija Vžigalica

When? Until January 18

Performans in akcijsko slikarstvo Yoshija Nakajime © Arhiv družine Nakajima

FEMALE, 30 – 40, CAUCASIAN (WHITE), SLIM / SLENDER, US 6, UK 4, EU 37: Nežka Zamar

The exhibition FEMALE, 30–40, CAUCASIAN (WHITE), SLIM / SLENDER, US 6, UK 4, EU 37 by interdisciplinary artist Nežka Zamar is at first glance a visually restrained, yet conceptually highly articulate spatial installation that unfolds as a carefully considered investigation of contemporary identities, materiality, and the perception of space. The title itself functions as a cold, almost bureaucratic sequence of descriptors, suggesting the standardization of the body and a perspective that reduces the individual to a data record. Nežka Zamar graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and completed part of her studies at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul, where she deepened her understanding of visual arts within a broader cultural context. Over the past decade, her work has been presented at numerous international exhibitions and biennials, from Belgrade and Venice to Rome and New York.

In this exhibition, Zamar presents a recent, comprehensive installation composed of several sections and conceived specifically for the selected space. Her work is grounded in research and documentation, focusing on conceptual complexity, the significance of material, and the relationship between space and in-between space. Paper is the central expressive medium, a material that through its fragility, whiteness, and apparent neutrality becomes a carrier of meaning. Through exceptionally precise execution of foundational surfaces and a carefully orchestrated interplay of light and shadow, the artist creates a multilayered composition of numerous objects that appear both minimalist and strongly suggestive.

Where? Bežigrajska galerija

When? Until February 8

Landscapes of the sky: Andraž Šalamun

The exhibition Landscapes of the sky offers an overview of the oeuvre of Andraž Šalamun (1947–2024), one of the central Slovenian painters, a philosopher, and an important member of the OHO group. In the spaces of Bežigrajska galerija, drawings and large-format paintings in acrylic on jute unfold as sensorially experienced images of inner and outer worlds. This is an exhibition that does not offer a linear survey, but rather an atmospheric journey through Šalamun’s remarkable expressive diversity.

Šalamun left a profound mark on the Slovenian cultural landscape with an extensive and stylistically varied body of work. After an early period of pastels and drawings, he turned to abstract painting and large-scale works after 1976. In the 1980s, he became one of the key representatives of so-called New Image painting, characterized by strong color and pronounced figuration, particularly in his well-known series of animal motifs. In the 1990s, he devoted himself to landscapes, from the cycles Suns and lyrical Mediterranean landscapes to the series Moss and Silver. After 2000, he painted Venice, created the series Cypress and Moons, and finally abstract cosmic landscapes that symbolically complete his creative arc.

The exhibition Landscapes of the sky highlights precisely these late works, in which Šalamun translates natural phenomena, the passages of the Sun and Moon, light, and sky into inner projections. The images do not function as illusions, but as states of being, where light can be read as a trace of the artist’s experience and gaze from nature itself. As Miloš Bašin wrote, this is the beauty of the inner and outer world without the pathos of destruction, the beauty of presence, here and now. The exhibition is thus not only a tribute to a great oeuvre, but also a quiet meditation on perception, time, and painting as a form of being.

Where? Bežigrajska galerija

When? Until February 8

Andraž Šalamun, -, 2010, akril na juti, 145x 296 cm, Foto Jaka Jeraša

Miki Muster, on the 100th anniversary of his birth

The exhibition Miki Muster, on the 100th anniversary of his birth revives the times when Ljubljana was flooded with the world of cartoons, comics, and animated heroes that shaped the childhoods of several generations. Through selected photo documents and objects, the exhibition presents the life and work of one of the most important Slovenian illustrators and animators, who laid the foundations of Slovenian comic and animated art.

Miki Muster, an academically trained sculptor, followed his passion for animation and drawn film already in his teenage years. Self-taught yet deeply dedicated, he mastered all the secrets of animation and brought his characters to life on Slovenian television, such as the lively trio of rabbits in the television ident Cikcak. Muster became recognizable as the father of the trio Zvitorepec, Trdonja, and Lakotnik, while his galaxy of characters also includes Lupinica and many others who won children’s hearts with their vitality and humor. Throughout his career, he consistently worked as a self-taught artist, without heavy reliance on technological tools, emphasizing manual skill and expressive line, which breathed independent life into his characters. The exhibition does not merely revive his heroes, but also the spirit of creativity, resilience, and love for art that permanently inscribed Miki Muster into the history of Slovenian visual expression.

Where? City Museum of Ljubljana

When? Until February 22

Miki Muster, photo: Tone Stojko

Temporary address, Od blizu alumni exhibition

The exhibition Temporary address at Galerija Jakopič brings together works by 17 artists selected from nearly 90 alumni of the year-long educational program Od blizu: Photography as a Way of Seeing the World. The Od blizu program, running at Galerija Jakopič since 2017, is based on a non-hierarchical educational model of exchange, collective learning, and the gradual unfolding of authorial approaches. Mentors Dr. Marija Skočir, Matevž Paternoster, Metod Blejec, Saša Kralj, and Janja Rebolj have over the years created an open space of exploration where individuals with very different backgrounds meet, united by a shared desire for in-depth reflection on photography as a way of understanding the world.

These are projects that understand photography less as a technical skill and more as a subtle tool of observation, reflection, and personal expression. What they share is a pronounced intimacy, a gaze that turns not outward, but inward, toward relationships, memories, spaces, and sensations that shape our everyday lives. The photographs recreate various environments, from a grandmother’s kitchen and student rooms to first apartments and weekend houses that are slowly losing their inhabitants. These spaces, whether we call them home or not, carry traces of personal stories, memories, and transitions. Temporary address reminds us that all spaces we inhabit are merely stations in a continuous process of becoming, and that at every moment, our dwelling is only temporary.

Where? Galerija Jakopič

When? Until April 12

Soba © Bruna Žeželić

Z njo © Drago Metljak

Design excellence 2025

The exhibition Design excellence 2025 once again confirms that Slovenian design possesses a clear vision, authorial confidence, and growing social relevance. The Association of Designers of Slovenia (DOS) once again presents awards for works that have marked the field of visual culture over the past year, not only through aesthetic refinement, but through thoughtful concept, context, and impact that goes beyond mere form.

A central role in the selection is played by the DOS professional jury, which identifies among the submitted works projects and bodies of work that make a significant contribution to the development of the design profession and its positioning within the broader social and economic space. The evaluation fields are wide-ranging, from graphic and product design to visual communications, interior and exterior equipment, spatial, scenographic, and multimedia solutions. This diversity reflects the complexity of contemporary design, which today operates at the intersection of creativity, research, and responsibility toward the environment.

Where? Cankarjev dom

When? Until March 30

ART VITAL: Ulay / Marina Abramović

The exhibition ART VITAL: 12 Years of the Ulay / Marina Abramović Tandem presents the first comprehensive, multilayered insight into one of the most iconic artistic partnerships in the history of performance art. At Cukrarna, the period between 1976 and 1988 unfolds, twelve years of shared life and creation by Marina Abramović and Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen), during which art and everyday life merged into an inseparable whole.

Povezano: Marina Abramović on beginnings and endings, Ljubljana and Slavoj Žižek, love, art, and forgiveness

From the very beginning, their practice was based on a radical questioning of authorship, identity, vulnerability, and mutual dependence, while they quite literally lived their art. For five years, they traveled without a permanent home in a Citroën van, without a studio, without a safe distance between work and life. Their collaboration began with the performance Relation in Space (1976), in which they used the body and movement as tools to explore trust and endurance, and reached its symbolic and emotional climax with the three-month walk along the Great Wall of China, documented in the film The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk (1988).

The exhibition brings together videos, photographs, objects from performances, drawings, sketches, letters, as well as diary and documentary records. These materials illuminate not only the public performances, but also the intimate processes, doubts, and tensions that accompanied their shared journey. The exhibition extends across all floors of Cukrarna and is conceived as a sequence of spatially connected chapters of a single, complex narrative.

Ljubljana holds a special place in this story, as Ulay spent the last decade of his life here. For this reason, the exhibition carries a distinct symbolic and emotional weight, as a meeting of art, memory, and legacy. ART VITAL is not merely a retrospective of a world-renowned tandem, but an intense experience of partnership that continues to resonate today as a vital, transformative, and indelible chapter of contemporary art.

Where? Cukrarna

When? Until May 3

Foto © Blaž Gutman, MGML / ART VITAL – 12 let tandema Ulay / Marina Abramović, razstava v Cukrarni (MGML, SLO), 2025