Artissima 2024


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Neja Tomšič


Wide Winds, We Set Sail


Neja Tomšič's multidisciplinary installation explores Galeb*, a sailing boat formerly owned by the ballet dancers Pia* (1908‒2000) and Pino Mlakar* (1907‒2006). Borrowing the title from Pia Mlakar's logbook, the artist focused on the boat's restoration, a process she documented between 2020 and 2022 in the Alto Adriatico Custom shipyard in Monfalcone (IT). In the project, she upgraded the experience of the physical space of the installation constructed of the boat's fragmentary remains with poetic interpretations of its symbolic meaning, bringing them together into a story of the multilayered nature of bodily experience.

In a world which does its best to break down the sense of the present day to infinitely individualised bits of whichever immersive environments there may be, an installation featuring a video on the slow, meticulous reconstruction of a boat and its (now) disused parts creates a situation which, in and of itself, immediately slows down one’s mind and body. Since the boat in question is Galeb, a long-standing companion to the two dancers, the experience also subtly evokes the image of sailing across the Mediterranean. The duality of the material space versus the imagined one brought forth by Tomšič prompts authenticity wherein one can internalise the imagined illusion of travel to awake to the complexity of the physical experience of the dance duo, even though one may have never seen them dance, or never will. Combined with the absence of their dance, this fiction allows visitors to give a new meaning to each element of the installation and, at the same time, unusual as it may sound, to their own bodies.

In positioning parts of the boat in relation to the video, Tomšič did not attempt to reconstruct them back into a vessel using presentation techniques. On the contrary, by placing them on metal mountings, she gave them a new life. As ruinous sculptures, they are former silent witnesses to gliding across the surface of the sea. The artist’s drawings have a similar effect in highlighting the story. The constructions, whose scale cannot be established precisely, are placed in an emptiness which relies on the visitor to make sense of. Although no horizon is seen in the video, shots of the seabed suggest the vastness of the sea. There, the two dancers appear merely in outline. The surface of the floor, the common denominator of experience in (almost) any building, is a constant reference point of indoor movement. On the open sea, with its absence of solid ground beneath one’s feet, the horizon works in a similar way. And to watch the video attentively while surrounded by the fragments, one needs to sit on the floor.

To some extent, the video is chronological, its central motif being the reconstruction process, where part of the boat’s material reality returns to dust. Visually, this is just as vital as physical work or the wood that remains part of the hull. Ironically, some parts of the boat are rendered useless with the restoration as they are best made from scratch. If only a while ago, their significance came from being elements of a decaying boat; today, their status in the Piran Maritime Museum, the caretaker of Galeb, is yet to be decided. These museum artefacts with an incomplete status embody “examples of ambiguity”, losing their identity through material preservation, as Plutarch's words in the video imply. Tomšič places us in a spatial situation entirely separate from what Galeb is today.

Even if the two dancers will never sail Galeb again, and even if the fully restored boat may seem less authentic than its remains exhibited, the words Pia Mlakar used when the boat was launched – “I've stood on it again!« – sound as a longed-for redemption. To her, the boat was valuable not as a prestigious vessel but as the bearer of memories of an experience she translated into her art. Tomšič comments on this value by drawing an analogy with another form of art that complements dance: music, using a score composed by Gašper Torkar. And when one of the shipbuilders plays Bach’s Suite No. 1 on the cello, this is a reminder that the essence of the wooden hull is immaterial, a result of a deliberate making process, floating between dust, light, and efforts to preserve what is worthwhile.

Materials are used in certain forms for periods of time in which they perform specific functions. Why and how does their material aspect attract one’s attention? Are what counts their internal or external properties? Is materiality not invariably the impact of both? An object or body's internal properties may seem essential and intrinsic to its existence, yet a new situation may arise and change this perception completely. The properties of a boat's bow, it being wooden and curved, can be perceived differently if it starts to rot or is overgrown with moss. Its materiality has hardly changed at all, but one's aesthetic experience when seeing it or even just mentioning moss changes drastically: the same bow suddenly becomes older, in a state of disrepair, humid, smelling of decay, its materiality suggesting some other reality which belongs not to a vessel but, for instance, to the life cycles of wood and trees.

Wide Winds, We Set Sail is an installation that creates a spatial score of meanings to materialise as a slow shipwreck. In her work, Tomšič creates a setting with two phantom protagonists who used technology (of a sailing boat) to explore movement in time. In this situation, one can give new meanings to “useless parts” and open opportunities to imagine the poetic body. This is the artist’s reminder that the limits of a studio – a dancer’s or painter’s – are never merely the limits of a strictly defined functional space but the limits of the world one dares to explore openly in all the dimensions of one’s corporeality.

Available works




Neja Tomšič, 2022
Galeb I
Watercolor on 300 gsm Arches paper
Oiled Walnut, UV glass
57 x 77 cm
Price: € 3.500 excl. VAT



Neja Tomšič, 2022
Galeb III
Watercolor on 300 gsm Arches paper
Oiled Walnut, UV glass
57 x 77 cm
Price: € 3.500 excl. VAT



Neja Tomšič, 2023
Galeb VI
Watercolor on 300 gsm Arches paper
Oiled Walnut, UV glass
57 x 77 cm
Price: € 3.500 excl. VAT



Neja Tomšič, 2022
Galeb V
Watercolor on 300 gsm Arches paper
Oiled Walnut, UV glass
57 x 77 cm
Price: € 3.500 excl. VAT



Neja Tomšič, 2020-2023
Wide Winds, We Set Sail
Sculpture
SOLD




Neja Tomšič, 2020-2023
Wide Winds, We Set Sail
Sculpture
SOLD




Neja Tomšič, 2020-2023
Wide Winds, We Set Sail
Sculpture
SOLD


*Pia and Pino Mlakar

Pia (1908‒2000) and Pino Mlakar (1907‒2006) were pioneers of ballet and ballet education in Slovenia. They met in Hamburg in 1927 at the Choreographic Institute of Rudolf Laban and have worked together since. Their career spanned 73 years. Between 1930 and 1944 they worked as artistic directors, dancers and choreographers at the Friedrichstheater in Dessau (1930–1932), the Municipal Theatre in Zurich (1934–1938), and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (1939‒1944). Their visionary project "Young Paths" (1931), which they performed partially without music and in a free dance style, received international attention and opened the doors to major theatres across Europe. They represented Yugoslavia and received a bronze medal at the International Choreography Competition in Paris. In 1945, they returned to Slovenia. They took over the leadership of the ballet at the Slovenian National Theatre in Ljubljana. Pino was also a professor of dance history and stage movement at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film, and Television (AGRFT) in Ljubljana, until 1960. They co-coreographed 50 ballets and became and legends of Slovenian ballet. Despite their life-long efforts to establish a 'ballet homestead' - a project to preserve their legacy and a visionary initiative of a dance center and residency space in Novo mesto, their vision was not realised, the homestead was abandoned and its future is uncertain. The Galeb sailboat, which they gifted to the Maritime Museum Sergej Mašera in Piran, remains their only tangible legacy.

*Galeb

The "Galeb" is a special sailboat, crafted in Trogir at the behest of Pino as a gift for his wife. It is considered maritime heritage, being the only preserved model of the Yugoslav racing class M6. What makes the sailboat even more precious is that it is inseparable from the creative and personal lives of Pia and Pino Mlakar, the legendary ballet duo known for their extraordinary and unconditional commitment to art throughout their lives.

Pia and Pino Mlakar created in radical conditions: in abandoned spaces without heating, overcoming pain (which Pino described as "transformation of red blood cells, necessary for top-notch movement"). When performing at the Belgrade National Theatre, they couldn't afford a hotel, so they camped for the whole season in friends' gardens. They got married on a sailboat: they opened a bottle of wine for the occasion and served a loaf of bread and cheese. When their daughter Veronika was born, Pino gifted Pia the sailboat "Galeb". The ballet duo then lived and created with it for almost sixty years (from 1936 to 1994). When creating new ballets, they usually rented abandoned or unused spaces, such as an unheated hall at Hotel Rogaška Slatina, a floor of Hotel Bellevue in Ljubljana or an abandoned military facility on a Croatian island. For Pia's mother, who cooked, and for their child, they rented a room, while they themselves lived on the boat, which had neither a toilet, nor running water, nor a kitchen. One could say they lived for sailing and the sea. The "Galeb" not only shaped their legacy in this way but is special because it is their only legacy. Their vision to establish a ballet ensemble were never realized, and their ballet homestead, an artist residency space they built in Novo mesto stands deserted and decaying. The sailboat Galeb which they donated to the Maritime Museum in Piran has been restored (in line with their wishes for it to keep sailing) and can once again be seen at sea, since last year. Therefore, the "Galeb" is primarily the dance of Pia and Pino Mlakar at sea and a symbol of their life and artistic stance.


Neja Tomšič



Born in 1982

Lives and works in Ljubljana, SI

Neja Tomšič is an exploratory visual artist, storyteller, performer and ritual creator working with drawings, objects and sound, interested in long processes and slow labour. In her practise, she explores overlooked particularities and often concealed stories from the past to challenge prevailing historical narratives. In this way, she creates situations in which a new understanding of the present can emerge.

In 2008, Neja Tomšič completed her studies in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (University of Ljubljana, SI). She continued her education at the Faculty of Humanities (University of Primorska, SI), where she completed three-year doctoral programme in Philosophy and Theory of Visual Culture. Between 2006 and 2022, she participated in 14 art residencies and received several awards. She is the author of Opium Clippers, a research and art project that has been performed in 16 countries at over 120 events. For her book, she received two awards for the best artist’s book in Slovenia (P74 and Slovenian Book Fair, 2019). Her debut short film, Workers Are Leaving the Factory, was in the official competition of the Festival of Slovenian Cinema 2021 and Days of Slovenian Cinema (Belgrade, RS). Her work has been shown at TATE Modern (London, UK); the Auawirleben Festival (Bern, CH); the 35. Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana, SI); MSUM - Museum of Contemporary Art (Ljubljana, SI); Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, DK); MUCEM (Marseille, FR); Cukrarna (Ljubljana, SI); MAO – Museum of Architecture and Design (Ljubljana, SI) and others.

Neja Tomšič is a member of the Nonument Group, an artist collective that maps, researches and intervenes in nonuments - public spaces, monuments and architecture that have undergone a semantic shift due to political and social changes. The group was honoured with the Plečnik Medal, the highest national award for architecture.



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