Nataša Prosenc Stearns: Incantations

Exhibition by the internationally established artist whose work combines the expressive modes of traditional media, video and film.

Multi-media project entitled Incantations is based on a critical perspective on today's lifestyle, where ritual is losing its power as an important connective event in traditional societies that fosters peace and harmony.  The exhibition will be open from 28 March to 25 April 2025. 

Nataša Prosenc Stearns is an internationally established artist. Even with her early works, she introduced a distinctly sensual language to Slovenian video art: she is most interested in subjects related to the study of the human body, its physiological limitations and existence, to the search for spiritual meaning, harmony between humans and nature, and examination of culturally determined stereotypes. Her moving images invite us to look further than our senses, beneath the surface of the skin, beyond the limitations of the body, into the realm of the unconscious, the dreamlike. Her work essentially celebrates the uniqueness of human physical embodiment, the individuality of each person, their spiritual growth and creative power. On the other hand, it draws our attention to our inability to perceive, comprehend and understand the world beyond the conventional frameworks of rational thought.

Her latest multi-media project entitled Incantations is also based on a critical perspective on today's lifestyle, where ritual is losing its power as an important connective event in traditional societies that fosters peace and harmony. The artist has conceived the exhibition as an intertwinement of digital photo collages and video projections from two cycles Misericorde (2024) and Incantations (2025), which, despite their technological essence, convey a sense of the organic.

Nataša Prosenc Stearns is an artist and filmmaker who graduated from the Department of Design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. It is there that she created her first videos, and later installations and films. The Fulbright Grant took her to Los Angeles, where she obtained her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her works have been showcased in Slovenian and international galleries and museums, her project Gladiators represented Slovenia at the 48th Venice Biennial and won her the Prešeren Foundation Award. She has received a series of other grants and awards, and appeared for the second time at the Venice Biennial in 2015 as part of the exhibition Twenty Artists from Los Angeles. Her works are included in the national and international permanent collections, in the archive of the DIVA Station at SCCA Ljubljana, and in the contemporary opera code L.