Dušica Dražić and Polonca Lovšin at The Smell of Freshly Chopped Wood exhibition in Zagreb

We are happy that Polonca Lovšin and Dušica Dražić are participating in The Smell of Freshly Chopped Wood exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb with works that were produced as part of the Forest Encounters project. Lovšin is exhibiting two works that examine the relationship between people and the forest. Spotlighting women foresters, hunters, and forest owners in Slovenia, The Forest in Women’s Hands (2023) examines our relationship to forests through the perspective of gender. Mushrooms at the End of the World (2023) is centred on fungi – organisms that connect all life on earth and possess incredible transformative power.
Dražić is presenting the reforestation workshop of the Pešter Plateau in Serbia that was organized in August 2024 as part of the production of the film It Rains Differently.

The exhibition The Smell of Freshly Chopped Wood – which opens on December 19, 2024 – talks about our life, work, and belonging to specific landscapes, forests, islands, plateaus, and valleys of Balkans and Mediterranean region, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Italy, which at first sight look like idyllic nature. In fact, they are “living archives” whose “documents” are trees marked for felling, artificial lakes, objects left behind by refugees, or the memories of the people who live there. We experience nature only through our presence and our activities: nature is wood for cutting, water for hydroelectric power plants, wind for windmills, animals for hunting, plants and fruits for our food, or the routes of our transport routes.

Curated by Zdenka Badovinac, Jasna Jakšić, and Ana Škegro

Artists: Dušica Dražić, Nermin Duraković, Ana Hušman, Maria Lai, Polonca Lovšin, Plateauresidue, No Name Kitchen, Masa Nazzal, Marika and Marko Pogačnik, Anton Vidokle, Karla Crnčević and Zemlja za nas (Land for Us)