Photo: Žiga Gorišek
16 January – 20 February 2024
P74 Gallery
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Neža Urbiha’s artistic practice is centred around human and power relations, most notably those present in her life. A large part of her work to date has been made in the painting medium, which, over the past few years, she’s been constantly developing and extending – i.e. transferring the two-dimensionality of the painting to a spatial arrangement. A frequent object in her work is the motif of the doll, at times appearing in a painting, other times as an object. While the object of a rag doll can be associated with one’s childhood, Urbiha’s concepts and artwork show that it is much more than just a toy.
The ambivalent role of a rag doll comes to the front in both a dominant and a subordinate role. At first glance, it may seem to be a controllable object. In Urbiha’s process, the doll is first sewn by the artist and then painted – portrayed – in various poses and situations. This puts the artist, the doll’s seamstress, in a power position as she decides on the doll’s appearance and function. However, using the doll creates a twist: the doll is now subjectivised, which drives the artist to question her relationship with her loved ones, her empathy, autonomy, desire to control the situation and the fear from manipulation and responsibility that comes with power.
The current exhibition showcases the Homemaker project (2023), representing the artist’s shift from painting to spatial installation. The setup consists of a wallpaper made by the artist and objects – boxes, five of which contain rag dolls, while others are empty. Each doll represents a day not spent with her loved ones, be it her partner, her parents, her twin sister or her friend (five persons, hence the five boxes). This should be observed as an ironic gesture – the time not spent with her loved ones is the time spent producing the dolls – that points to the lost possibility of a moment that could have been spent together with a fellow human being. The lack is materialised in a personified doll that is later given as a present to the loved one with whom the attempt to hang out had failed. The fictitious giveaways of the seventy-two dolls are Urbiha’s attempt to recreate a feeling of closeness with her loved ones. However, the accumulation of rag figurines makes them bound to lose meaning in the eyes of the recipient and to only appear as excessive and superfluous.
The patterned wallpaper, featuring a stylised meadow, the close-up view of which reveals the images (portraits) of the rag dolls appearing from the flowers, creates an atmosphere of homeliness. This tranquillity is, however, interrupted by visual cracks that the artist achieves by tearing the wallpaper. The broken unity reveals vulnerability, insecurity and the void present in a young person’s growing up and the positioning of one’s identity within a family, platonic-romantic and professional environment. In addition, the soft forms and gender-coded colour palette further emphasise a contemplation of a woman’s role and position in different life structures, relationships, and life periods.
Another element is added to the installation – a box containing a medallion featuring copies of the painter’s self-portrait and a doll portrait. Urbiha is here emphasising the questions about her own position and self-articulation that form through a mirror image, i.e. the portrait. While the medallion is a personal artefact intended to preserve feelings and memories, the box indicates its importance in contrast to the displayed cardboard boxes and their storage and accumulation functions. Cardboard boxes are associated with basements, attics, garages and other spaces in which we tend to keep numerous once important personal objects, carriers of memories, which eventually become forgotten, while their actual value is questionable.
Eva Jamnik, Jadranka Veljić
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Neža Urbiha (2000) is currently completing her master’s degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where she graduated in 2022. She works mainly in the field of painting, graphics and spatial installations. She uses various media, often combining them with traditional handicrafts, to explore themes of domesticity and close interpersonal relationships, especially the dynamics between their reality and representation and the implicit power dynamics present in these relationships. Urbiha is a journalist at Radio Študent, where she covers culture, art criticism, and art theory. She is also a member of the BRAVO art collective. Her solo work has been featured in the 2024 Ponjava group exhibitions and at Parkplac in the Mala galerija BS. She participated in the Pita Projekt Collective’s Friends project, which was presented at Industria in Brno at the Selling Out exhibition.
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Interview with Neža Urbiha (pdf)
The interview was conducted by Maja Todič.
