Photo: Pika Basaj
8 January – 5 February 2025
P74 Gallery
You are cordially invited to attend the opening of the solo exhibition by Pika Basaj on Thursday, 8 January 2026, between 7pm and 9pm at the P74 Gallery in Ljubljana.
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It has become somewhat regular for us to start the calendar year with the YOUNG series, an integral part of the P74 Gallery programme that aims to present and promote young and/or less frequently exhibited artists. This time, after viewing the final-semester exhibitions at art academies, we selected two artists. Both participated in the Ponjava sV student exhibition (7–11 June 2025) that was organised at the initiative of mentors and students from the Department of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, which has been showcasing students’ current production across all majors for the past two years. Pika Basaj is finishing her studies at the Department of Painting, while Jernej Šimec at the Department of Photography. We are showcasing their works in two parallel solo exhibitions. These projects are not related by theme or medium, yet both are characterised by processuality and ephemerality. For the second year in a row, art history students from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana are also involved in the preparation and implementation of the exhibition. Ana Jazbec, Marta Novak, Vida Šturm, and Aja Topolnik are contributing, among other things, the exhibition texts and interviews with the artists as part of the Exercises in Modern Art II course.
Nina Skumavc
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Pika Basaj: chair – decision // thought – knot
Everyday actions, manners of behaviour, and organising often seem entirely neutral, until we begin to see them as structures with their own rules and effects. Pika Basaj focuses her artistic practice on exploring the psychological mechanisms of the subject or subjects and how they function. Through gestures of performative artistic expression, she establishes rituals and ceremonial practices that provide a framework for exploring the way of functioning, relationships, and the performativity of everyday life. She materialises her works as spatial installations, where the performativity of her practice extends to other media as well.
The piece titled chair – decision // thought – knot (2025-) uses an algorithm as the project’s fundamental matrix. It guides the artist’s working logic, organisational method, and behaviour. It serves as a structural framework within which she performs every day, forming a ritual. Each day, she photographs a randomly selected chair and makes a random decision. The ritual is complemented by three additional criteria: the object of choice, to which both the chair and the decision belong, must not be repeated; the decision must be made spontaneously and within a specified time frame.
The piece operates on two interconnected levels. Building on the artist’s dematerialised practice, the algorithm that determines »personal durational performance«, the project is further defined by its materialisation as a spatial setting, emerging from fragments and traces of the performed ritual. The piece is not merely a fixed format and gallery presentation, but rather a fluid, living structure, in which personal performance serves as a tool for creating the work, while the project, even in its translation into physical space, has no fixed end or anticipated outcome. The spatial setting places the performance in space and time. Due to the radical connection of artistic expression with life and the interweaving of both aspects into an almost inseparable whole, the project cannot be equated with classical installations. The exhibition segment is merely a by-product. It functions as a scenography that hints at the procedures and effects of what otherwise concerns the artist, i.e., the subject of the performance. In perpetual transition between the material, the immaterial, the rules, and decisions, a space is formed in which the artwork is not the result but a way of functioning.
With precise instructions, a broken-down structure, and clearly defined algorithmic elements, the piece appears rigid. One might be led to believe that, in this context, performativity is strictly defined and does not permit unpredictability or deviations. However, despite its rigid structure, the work includes a variable component. The grounding rules – selecting a chair that must not appear more than once and making a random, spontaneous decision – are both presented and conditioned as new and unpredictable. By seeking a balance between spontaneity and the compulsion to make a decision, the artist places the subject’s (her own) way of functioning, defined by her relationship to the algorithm, at the forefront of her interest.
The project acts as an experiment in which the author asks where the process of performing a ritual and repeating an algorithm can be directed and what effects they can produce. By exploring such psychological mechanisms, introduced by consistent repetition and set rules, she builds topographies of mental spaces. Through the repetition of a daily ritual and clearly defined rules, the algorithm becomes an immeasurable force that spreads beyond the project’s framework and into the artist’s everyday life. How long does it take to stabilise a particular effect of performing the ritual and thereby expanding the algorithm? Within the ritual’s framework, the initially random chair becomes the harbinger of the algorithm, which, through frequent appearances, constantly redirects the subject’s stream of thought, and the piece of paper in her mouth compels her to make a decision; both guide her and directly interfere with her mental space. There, it triggers frustration, raising the question: can the algorithm eventually become (the artist’s) way of thinking and functioning, and what consequences might this have for her and her surroundings?
Vida Šturm, Aja Topolnik
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Pika Basaj (2000) is currently completing her master’s degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, at which she also graduated in 2023. In her artistic practice, she focuses on the formation of ritual practices and algorithms that function as prosthetic formalisms and occasional models for transforming existing psychogeographies. Her work has been exhibited in several group exhibitions, including Ponjava, Academy of Fine Arts and Design (2024, 2025); Although!, Little Gallery (2025); and Expression: Along the Silk Road at Nantong Art Museum in China (2023). She is the recipient of the 2022/2023 Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana Award. In addition to her solo practice, she also works within the art collective BRAVO, with which she participated in the 2025 GuestRoomMaribor residency programme and in several group exhibitions, including By the Way Important (Alkatraz Gallery, 2025), Nest Collective’s Anthology of Scream performance (Pionirski Teatre, 2024), and Parkplatz (Little Gallery, 2024).
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Interview with Pika Basaj (pdf)
The interview was conducted by Vida Šturm and Aja Topolnik.