Aleksandra Vajd & Anetta Mona Chişa

The collaboration between Aleksandra Vajd and Anetta Mona Chişa explores the material and symbolic alchemy of photography. Their spatial installations, interweaving the specificities of gallery architecture, reflect an understanding of photography as a medium embedded in broader ecological and technological processes.
From the raw materials and energy sources required to build and power our devices, to the environmental impacts of their production and disposal, media technologies and culture are fundamentally tied to Earth’s geology and ecology. Attention to the materiality of technologies that moves beyond the notion of media as merely cultural artifacts allows us to also view photographic practice within an expanded, planetary framework. Tar Star unfolds photography as a process that involves more than just humans and is embedded in material transformations, reaching far into the past and future, beyond our presence on the planet. The connecting thread of the exhibition is the entanglement of cables, evoking global networks of communication and energy distribution. They coil through the ceiling, crawl out from the floor, and finally tangle in the videos on screens they power. They form three main nodes, each exploring – through various material, formal, and symbolic associations – the role of the Sun in processes shaping photography in its analogue and digital manifestations.
The screens, emanating white artificial light are partly coated with bitumen, which played a key role in heliography that produced the first known photograph. The sunlight’s chemical action on surfaces leaves a lasting trace, which led early photographs to be viewed as “sun drawings” created by the “hand of nature”. In this sense, photography can be understood as a continuation of ancient processes of imprinting through light’s interactions with matter, as found in sun bleaching, skin tanning, even fossilisation.
The arrangement of screens composes a black circle that, sensitive to light, slowly solidifies. Bitumen, with its fossil origin, reminds us of its kin: the fuels that make up our technological devices and remain the primary energy source. As ancient sunlight, buried in the remains of prehistoric organisms, fossil substances embody the Sun’s dark legacy and – since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution – have seeped into every pore of our existence.
Through the ceiling panels, cables weave a different “sun drawing”. Its motif is the latest synoptic solar map, showing sunspots. It is created using digital images captured by Earth-based observatories. The invention of photography revolutionised astronomical observation, which had previously relied on imprecise hand-drawn sketches and memory. With photography, it became possible to accurately document, track, and predict solar activity – solar storms and flares, which can negatively affect the technological infrastructures vital to societal and economic processes.
The interplay between digital technologies and weaving is underscored by the architecture of Cukrarna Gallery itself. The perforated panels recall the punched cards used in early automated looms, which inspired the development of computer programming. Weaving, traditionally a women's craft, has long served as a narrative and mnemonic medium, embedding events, cultural symbols, myths, and even spells into fabric. Picking up this thread, Tar Star continues with weaving as a practice of fabulation for post-human times.
In the videos, cables intertwine with snakes, whose shapes they recall. While it is hard to avoid the numerous meanings snakes carry in our culture, their presence in Tar Star may evoke technology’s dual nature as a pharmakon – both remedy and poison, depending on its use. Perhaps they signal cyclical nature and transformation. Escaping the meanings we wish to impose upon them, their sun-loving bodies weave through the loops of our anthropocentric patterns, crafting a different narrative that testifies to the deep entanglement of human and non-human worlds – an unfinished story, with an uncertain yet open future. What role will we play in it?
Curated by Tjaša Pogačar
With the support of
ZOO Čudežne zverinice Bled.
Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday: 10.00–19.00
Tickets
Free entry.