You are kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition Traditional Lighting by Nika Lapkovski on Friday, 1 March at 19:00 in front of Night Window Display Gallery Pešak, ACC Metelova mesto. 

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In the month of March the Night Window Display Gallery Pešak will again be marked by Red Dawns, international feminist and queer festival that is happening annually at the ACC Metelkova Mesto (and nearby). For the festival’s 20th anniversary Nika Lapkovski, this year’s author of the festival design, will present the installation Traditional Lighting. The exhibition and the title bring to mind the festive public decorations such as city Christmas lights yet the connection is only superficial. The constellation of Lapkovski’s works is less invasive to the public space and is above all connected to the festival’s visual history.

Red Dawns collective each year invites an artist to design the visual image of the festival, who then leaves a unique authorial mark on the festival. This year’s design is composed of twenty elements. Each individual symbol that will be exhibited at the Night Window Display Gallery Pešak is actually an artistically unified stylised illustration of previous festival images. Special focus was put on the font design, which was made specifically for this occasion. Both fonts do not comply with the prescribed rules of aesthetic beauty. The Rezida font is composed of symbols; the shapes that prevail are excessively rounded and resemble massive drops of liquid on one side and shapes with sharp edges on the other. At closer inspection one can see that the rhythm of the signs’ thickening is happening on the horizontal axis and reflects the horizontal nature of Red Dawn’s organizational structure. This is a deliberately queerified font, since its contrast is turned around, serifs asymmetrical and the incline of the translation negative, adds the artist.

Traditional Lighting in its essence is a femmage to all the previous artists that made the festival’s images and are or were in many cases part of the collective themselves, while their posters were each year an important part of Red Dawns’ identity. The exhibition is also a tribute to the festival itself that with its presence and persistence managed to create its own special tradition at ACC Metelkova Mesto and in Ljubljana.

Anabel Černohorski

Nika Lapkovski (1994, Ljubljana) is attending the 1st year of postgraduate studies in Graphic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. In their thesis (mentorship of prof. Botas Kenda) they dealt with the problem of stigmatization of menstrual bleeding. As a graphic designer and photographer, they collaborate with the Ljubljana Pride, TransAction & Legebitra associations as well as the Red Dawns collective. They have participated at group exhibitions within the Lesbian Quarter project, the Pride Parade Festival and others. The Message group project was also exhibited at the International Design Festival Plan D in Zagreb (2017).

The exhibition will be open until 31 March 2019.
Free viewing.

Co-organization/Co-production: Galerija Nočna izložba Pešak
Map of  ACC Metelkova mesto