# Event Details

- **Event Name**: ? — Neja Tomšič: A garden, somewhat deserted | Vrt, nekoliko puščaven
- **Event Start and End Date**: Fri, 23 May, 2025 at 12:00 pm – Fri, 23 May, 2025 at 06:00 pm
- **Event Description**: Neja Tomšič
A garden, somewhat deserted
23/05 — 29/08/2025
Curated by Nikolaos Akritidis
www.ravnikar.org

"'It’s strange that a tree falls like that', a friend said while walking through Rafut Park, pointing to the red oak’s body, cradled gently by the earth. 'As if all the trees around it were trying to catch it.'"
— Neja Tomšič, excerpt from a short text written in 2025

Neja Tomšič's practice departs from a slow observation of sites, noticing incidental or historical gestures within foliage, silence, and forgotten corners. It is at the enduring intersection between the botanical and the political that her works develop with a
quiet urgency. In A garden, somewhat deserted, she invites us into a landscape of fragments, stories, and exchanges that challenge notions of indigeneity and belonging. The exhibition brings together drawings, watercolours, sculptural frames, bas-reliefs, embossed prints, and a multi-channel sound installation which are interlinked through a historiography of green spaces and the speculative imaginaries that they construct.

These presences in the exhibition grew from an inquiry of overlooked terrains that are physically distant from each other, yet connected by the movement of people, seeds, and ideas during the modern era. Tomšič constructs a temporal bridge between Rafut Park in Pristava, close to Nova Gorica, and gardens maintained by Slovenian women who migrated to Alexandria as care workers during the late 19th and first half of the 20th century. Her new works bring these spaces into contact, highlighting their overlapping histories and mapping their contributions to modern understandings of nature as something to be controlled and categorised. This relational approach brings forth questions about gardens, those who conceive them, and how they are remembered.

The series of watercolours was created following a period of fieldwork in Rafut Park and pays close attention to the materiality of the green space, depicting the bark of the oldest tree in the park (a red oak which has recently fallen), and spaces reclaimed by nature. They are a testament to the park as a place that bears scars of history and hosts contemporary ecological relations. It is inscribed in a lineage of green spaces that were influenced by the 19th century understanding of the metropolis, separating cities from nature which needed be domesticized and reconstructed. A series of blank embossed prints represents the cartography of the park and places it in dialogue with Gabriel Thouin's typology of gardens first published in 1819, challenging the notion that these spaces can be reduced to a single type while also proposing new ones: the submerged garden, the garden of hybrid plants, or the erased garden.

Sporadically across the gallery space, Tomšič presents a series of bas-reliefs casts representing missing pieces from fragmented archaeological remnants found in Slovenia such as the altars from Ptuj depicting Nutrices, relics of a Celtic-Roman cult of maternity and motherhood. Their imagined missing parts were sculpted with attention to the oral histories of women from families once connected to theAlexandrian diaspora, who recall the flowers, herbs, and foods they cultivated abroad and brought home. They focus on a native variety of Cichorium intybus, a species of chicory which is said to have been cultivated in the gardens of St. Francis Asylum and the cultural centre for Slovenian women in Alexandria. At a time when expansive green spaces with imported species were built to display wealth and power, women from Slovenian communities migrated to Alexandria to work as wet nurses and domestic carers, travelling with seeds from home. The widespread chicory plant becomes the central decorative element of the bas-reliefs, bringing visibility to the everyday practices involved in maintaining families and places that were not monumentalised.

Throughout the exhibition, the motif of the garden recurs as a political and intimate site of resistance. In contrast to the colonial, male dominated tradition of exotic botanical collections designed to measure and display, the gardens tended to by Slovenian women in Alexandria appear to be almost invisible in history. The multi-channel sound installation reflects on the taxonomical categorisation of trees in Rafut Park, enunciating the names of those which survived and those which disappeared, as well as the scientific criteria used to establish their value as individual specimens. Tomšič worked with a choral and composer Gašper Torkar to create this work which builds on the notion of ritual calling and incantation, pleading for the testimonies of the trees and evoking their symbolic space in relation to their scientific evaluation. In the series of drawings with a light palette, Tomšič gives form to minute details from the different periods and users of the green space which elude representation: scattered stones, hidden roots, and shards of Villa Rafut folded into the earth after it was bombed during the first world war - all of which speak to the artist's sensitivity and determination to trace meaning.

Across mediums and motifs, the exhibition holds a subtle tension between natural growth and scientific categorisation, or between what is documented and what is felt. Tomšič treads the line between botany and mythology, reinterpreting history and engaging with speculative imaginaries. What kinds of knowledge do we allow to flower? Who gets to name, to map, and to archive? To walk through A garden, somewhat deserted is to enter a landscape shaped not only by species and stones, but also by the quiet labour of women who moved between worlds, leaving traces in soil, language, and lineage. In Tomšič’s hands, their memory becomes more than a subject of study: it is a ritual act of cultivation, of reclaiming what has long been silenced beneath the surface.
— Nikolaos Akritidis


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.


?
??????? ?????
ODPIRALNI ČAS

???SRE — ???PET, 12 — 18
and by appointement / in po dogovoru

???????? ???????
Vošnjakova ulica 4
SI — 1000 Ljubljana

???.????????.???
- **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/ljubljana/—-neja-tomšič-a-garden-somewhat-deserted-|-vrt-nekoliko-puščaven/200028203628731
- **Event Categories**: art, fine-arts, exhibitions, entertainment, festivals, performances, literary-art
- **Interested Audience**: 
  - total_interested_count: 55

## Ticket Details


## Event venue details

- **city**: Ljubljana
- **state**: LB
- **country**: Slovenia
- **location**: Vošnjakova ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
- **lat**: 46.05616
- **long**: 14.50294
- **full address**: Vošnjakova ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Vošnjakova ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija,Ljubljana, Slovenia

## Event gallery

- **Alt text**: ? — Neja Tomšič: A garden, somewhat deserted | Vrt, nekoliko puščaven
  - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events1/banners/f0367b95e23e7212a66b7d649d82744a27802f6edff15d7d2e20cdb7bcbfb76d-rimg-w1200-h628-dcd7d7d7-gmir?v=1747450532

## FAQs

- **Q**: When and where is ? — Neja Tomšič: A garden, somewhat deserted | Vrt, nekoliko puščaven being held?
  - **A:** ? — Neja Tomšič: A garden, somewhat deserted | Vrt, nekoliko puščaven takes place on Fri, 23 May, 2025 at 12:00 pm to Fri, 23 May, 2025 at 06:00 pm at Vošnjakova ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Vošnjakova ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija,Ljubljana, Slovenia.
- **Q**: Who is organizing ? — Neja Tomšič: A garden, somewhat deserted | Vrt, nekoliko puščaven?
  - **A:** ? — Neja Tomšič: A garden, somewhat deserted | Vrt, nekoliko puščaven is organized by Ravnikar.
- **Q**: Who is this event for? Is it right for me?
  - **A:** ? — Neja Tomšič: A garden, somewhat deserted | Vrt, nekoliko puščaven is ideal for art lovers, trade professionals, collectors, and exhibition enthusiasts exploring the latest in their field. Whether you're a first-time attendee or a longtime enthusiast in Ljubljana, this event is thoughtfully curated to deliver a standout experience worth every moment. With 50+ people already showing interest, this is clearly an event worth adding to your calendar - don't miss out.

## Structured Data (JSON-LD)

```json
[
    {
        "@context": "https://schema.org",
        "@type": "Event",
        "name": "? — Neja Tomšič: A garden, somewhat deserted | Vrt, nekoliko puščaven",
        "image": "https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events1/banners/f0367b95e23e7212a66b7d649d82744a27802f6edff15d7d2e20cdb7bcbfb76d-rimg-w1200-h628-dcd7d7d7-gmir?v=1747450532",
        "startDate": "2025-05-23",
        "endDate": "2025-05-23",
        "url": "https://allevents.in/ljubljana/—-neja-tomšič-a-garden-somewhat-deserted-|-vrt-nekoliko-puščaven/200028203628731",
        "location": {
            "@type": "Place",
            "name": "Vošnjakova ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia",
            "address": {
                "@type": "PostalAddress",
                "streetAddress": "Vošnjakova ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija,Ljubljana, Slovenia",
                "addressLocality": "Ljubljana",
                "addressRegion": "LB",
                "addressCountry": "SI"
            },
            "geo": {
                "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
                "latitude": "46.05616",
                "longitude": "14.50294"
            }
        },
        "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode",
        "description": "Neja Tomšič\nA garden, somewhat deserted\n23/05 — 29/08/2025\nCurated by Nikolaos Akritidis\nwww.ravnikar.org\n\n\"'It’s strange that a tree falls like that', a friend said while walking through Rafut Park, pointing to the red oak’s body, cradled gently by the earth. 'As if all the trees around it were try",
        "organizer": [
            {
                "@type": "Organization",
                "name": "Ravnikar",
                "url": "https://allevents.in/org/ravnikar/23946022"
            }
        ]
    }
]
```